If 2010 was the year e-readers and tablet computers entered the mainstream, 2011 will be when the electronic reading vessel truly disrupts its content. On multipurpose mobile devices, from smart-phones to the iPad and its emerging competitors, the book will cease to be a book. It will be an “app”.
E-readers and computing tablets will continue their impressive momentum. The number of Americans owning a dedicated reading device trebled in 2010 to 11m, and will pass 15m in 2011, according to Forrester Research. The iPad took off even faster than the iPhone did a few years back. In 2010 Apple sold about 15m of its sexy touch-screen devices, prompting real competition: e-readers suddenly became affordable. Amazon slashed the price of its Kindle. Barnes & Noble and Sony followed suit.
This price war will continue in 2011.
The year will probably see the launch of Google Editions, the third big e-book retailer after Amazon and Apple.
Yet the printed book will never entirely die, as devotees of vinyl and film have shown. Nor should it: human knowledge is too precious to consign to the ether alone.
Read more at The Economist
