eBook Devices Dying, As Expected

The Demographics of Device Ownership

Some 19% of adults report owning an e-reader – a handheld device such as a Kindle or Nook primarily used for reading e-books. This is a sizable drop from early 2014, when 32% of adults owned this type of device.

Nothing but tumbleweeds around the Nook exhibits at Barnes & Noble. For some time now.

Little different around Kindles at Best Buy and Staples.

People have big-ass phones now. And they read IMs and Facebook and Twitter, not books.

Oh yes, I’ve been peeking over your damn shoulders!

Previously here:

Say Goodbye To eInk Readers This Year
eInk isn’t Dead Yet
The iPad Mini Will Mean The Death of eInk

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eBook Device Sales Drop In No Surprise

Waterstones is removing Kindles from stores

Waterstones is removing Amazon’s Kindle devices from many of it stores as sales “continue to be pitiful”.

Why is this any surprise?!

People have large phones to read on.

And better tablets.

When — and if — they read at all something other than narcissistic IMing.

Europe Says No To Proprietary eBook Formats

L’Europe va mettre fin aux formats propriétaires pour les livres numériques

Europe will put an end to proprietary formats for digital books

While the European Parliament will be renewed in May, the European Commission, which will also be fully reconstructed by the end of the year, embarks on a surprising activism: she finally grabs the file interoperability digital books, with the aim of forcing retailers using proprietary formats to end these systems.

Amazon and Apple, the two market leaders, are directly targeted. Currently, a digital book bought on Amazon.fr can only be read on the Kindle, the e-tailer reading lamp, or one of its applications. Reading lamp which does not accept the open format ePub. It is the same with the iBook Store, Apple’s digital library, which does not allow the reading on the terminals of the Apple brand.

Assuming this isn’t an April Fool’s item, what will happen?

Sonostar Announces eInk Smartwatch

Curved 320 x 240 1.73″ eInk touchscreen display with backlight, Bluetooth connection to iOS and Android apps, claims to be on sale now for US$199 — even though there seems to be no way to click through to buy.

I don’t understand the hype for these things. And if this is $199 for a 320 x 240 eInk display, what will be the price of Apple’s rumored iWatch?

The Sonostar site for those interested.

Onyx Does What The Nook Should’ve Been

The Boox eReader was surprisingly popular in some European countries — likely because it was the only eReader available for sale.

Nevertheless, Onyx must have been encouraged to further develop their products because Charbax has the scoop on two new products: an eInk phone and a new Boox eReader that’s essentially an eInk Android tablet!

That’s a move Nook Media should have made when it introduced the original Nook Touch. Having seen how eagerly people were rooting the original Nook and the NookColor, Nook Media should have capitalized on that and gone vanilla Android, with Nook as an app.

But it didn’t work out that way. And here we are today.

After the break, check out the exciting video.

Say Goodbye To eInk Readers This Year

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Rumors: Larger Display, Better Processor

Today though, the Galaxy Note 3 has surfaced again in a report from The Korea Times, the same publication which was the source of the original screen bump rumor back in December.

The publication again claims that the Galaxy Note 3 will be released later in the year and that when it does, it will feature a 6.3-inch display. However, it also looks like, unsurprisingly, that Samsung will be using a new processor inside of the Galaxy Note 3 as well.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

No, don’t ask me how the hell that will work. I still can’t wrap my head around the Ascend Mate with the 6.1″ display.

See it after the break next to the iPhone 5 to really blow your mind.

eInk isn’t Dead Yet

May 26, 2012 here: The iPad Mini Will Mean The Death of eInk

Well that’s not going to happen now. Not at $329.

The iPad Mini Will Mean The Death of eInk

Oh yes it will!

Let me get the basic objections out of the way:

1) eInk devices are cheaper
2) eInk devices are lighter
3) eInk devices can be read outside
4) eInk devices don’t hurt eyes

None of that matters to the general buying public.

If it did, we’d see eInk devices literally everywhere. We wouldn’t see a single iPad or Android tablet anywhere used for reading. Amazon would not have sold as many Kindle Fire (estimated at five million) as they did. The company that produces eInk would send out press releases about possible shortages due to overwhelming manufacturing demand. Plastic Logic would still be in the game.

You eInk users are a minority that will be ignored.

Full-Motion Video On eInk Screen

I guess I would have been more impressed if it had been an actual YouTube video with people. As it is, without seeing the original animation, it’s difficult to really tell what’s going on there — aside from all the ghosting. It makes the animation look like it was done in pencil — which is why I need to see the original.

I suppose some owners of the rooted Nook Touch would like to see a YouTube video now and then, except there’s one problem with that: There’s no speaker in the Nook Touch! And no headphone jack.

Are LCD Screens Killing eInk?

Report: eReader Sales Down — Way Down

Global shipments of e-readers will reach two million units in the first quarter of 2012 — down dramatically from nine million shipped in Q4 2011, according to new data from Digitimes Research.

It appears that color tablets, including the Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet and Nook Color, are luring eReader customers away from less expensive, less flashy e-ink models. Digitimes Research calls the phenomenon a “substitution effect,” one that has forced Amazon to reduce orders of e-ink eReaders from its suppliers thus far in 2012.

The big-picture view of the eReader market isn’t dire, however. Global shipments of eReaders climbed to 22.82 million units in 2011 — up 107 percent from a year earlier. And annual eReader shipments should exceed 60 million units by 2015, Digitimes Research estimates.

There’s only one company that knows the truth.

And it’s not Amazon.