The Apple iPad and the future of e-ink ebook readers

After Wednesday's high-profile announcement of the Apple iPad with epub support and a base price of $499, the reaction of one initially skeptical contributor to the MobileRead forums was "At that price point they basically just killed all e-ink devices, unless they start pumping them out at $50 each, which is highly unlikely. Amazon will probably survive as some kind of app, maybe, but who knows. Sony's dead in this game now. $499 is a price point that kills everything else dead, no matter what my initial reactions were."  Other enthusiastic and well-informed ebook fans chimed in to agree with this assessment.<br>
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However, a story in BusinessWeek this morning reported, "But after seeing Apple's expected "Kindle killer," some analysts don't think the iPad will do much to hurt sales of the Kindle [and] Forrester analyst James McQuivey agrees, and is even considering raising his estimate on total sales of the Kindle and other single-purpose e-book readers in 2010 to 7 million, from his previous estimate of 6 million.<br>
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Those are pretty diametrically opposed viewpoints.  Many members of TeBC have long followed the twists and turns of the ebook industry (I myself started with the Rocket eBook over 10 years ago).  Much as I enjoy reading on my Kindle 2, It's easy for me to see why people think a relatively inexpensive color multipurpose device would outshine and outsell a gray-scale single-purpose one.  Anyone have any insight into why a presumably astute Forrester analyst might reach the counterintuitive conclusion that the iPad might actually help sales of e-ink readers?



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