eBooks - Flexible Screens and Beyond

Rob Enderle sketches out the distant future of e-books and e-book readers.
"Over the next 10 years, eBooks are likely to change dramatically. Their capabilities have already started to blend with MP3 players, and will blend with video players next year when the Apple tablet launches (assuming Steve Jobs gives the product its final blessing). But what does the future hold?
Initial reviews of the Barnes & Noble Nook showcase promise, but also hint at a first-gen product that should likely be avoided by most. The full details and verified existence of the Apple tablet have been held off until March or April. And the Sony eBook reader is still crippled by its store. The near-term future remains the Amazon Kindle 2.

The Future of eBooks: Flexible Screens and Beyond

• By: Rob Enderle • December 15, 2009

Folding ebook

"We are also watching more things on services like YouTube or Hulu, and listening to music off of a variety of music streaming sources like Slacker (my personal favorite). Apple will, if rumors are true, be the first to explore this breadth fully with its tablet. But the technology needed to do this right is at least three to five years out. If you use an LCD screen, battery life and readability are sacrificed. If you use e-Ink, multimedia is limited to low frame rate video and music. In addition, multimedia consumes a lot of bandwidth, and what makes the initial eBooks so affordable is that that books use very little.

There is a blended ePaper LCD screen coming next year, and at an analyst meeting last week, consensus was it is three years from making it into high volume products. In addition, 4G wireless (LTE and WiMax) is expected to be widely available by 2013, which gives us the potential for that perfect storm: an affordable blended device.

Flexible Screens

"While these still look to be about five to 10 years out, the need to make these devices more portable will undoubtedly drive us eventually to flexible screens. Current e-readers just aren’t very portable. The electronics are a small part of the package, the problem is the screen, and eventually we will have a flexible one. The issue will be touch: Devices like the Nook are already showing up with touch screens, and doing touch on a flexible screen could prove to be problematic, suggesting a near-term choice between the technologies. Personally, between touch and flexible screens, for what e-readers are initially being used for, I think portability rules. But as these evolve, touch will likely become increasingly important.

Convergence: Smartphones, Smartbooks, eBooks, Media Players

"Going forward, it will increasingly be difficult to tell where one of these device classes begins, and the other drops off. People are already reading eBooks on their iPhones, already listening to music on their eBooks, and once we get the blended ePaper-LCD screens, or OLED screens, and stronger Web-based services, even notebook computers may get dropped into the mash up. A future device may replace all of these devices in a single form factor. It will likely take 10 to 15 years – at least – for us to find this perfect storm product, but we are on our way. Stranger things have happened; I’m looking forward to the amazing things that are coming.

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