E-Ink Readers going cheap due to imminent Amazon Tablet launch

Though 6 million ereaders were sold in 2010, experts predict it is all downhill from here for these devices, which will be edged out by the growing number of increasingly affordable tablets on the market.  By 2015, twice as many people will own tablets as do ereaders


Amazon has rocked the e-reader market with news leaking of up to 800,000 Android tablets being prepared for a U.S. Spring launch, showing that Amazon is switching priorities from e-ink to tablet e-readers. It can be no coincidence that Apple Tablet sales now exceed Amazon Kindle Sales.


Coincidentally the Kobo reader is being discounted in the U.S. and in Australia, no doubt due to the lowering of the Kindle price to US114 (with a line of advertising). The Kobo is being advertised at $99 at Best Buy in the USA. 


And last month, Barnes & Noble released an update to the Nook Color that pushed it more in the direction of tablets, adding its own app store with games such as Angry Birds, a native email app and a Nook Friends social network.


Why Tablets instead of e-ink? 
1. The Amazon effect...

Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps made a compelling case last March for an Amazon tablet. She cited research showing... 

• more consumers would consider buying a tablet from Amazon (24%) than Motorola (18%). 
• Amazon could take advantage of the fact that Apple has alienated publishers with its stringent rules regarding ebooks.
• Amazon might be able to sell the device for below cost in the hopes of making it up by selling content, as it does with the Kindle, giving the device price parity or perhaps an advantage over iPad 2 pricing."

2. More Appealing ebooks
 Since Al Gore teamed up with former Apple employees at Push Pop Press to "change the way we read books”, we  can expect...

"...high quality photography with interactive graphics and animations. The Push Pop Press publishing platform opens doors to telling a story with more photos, more videos and interactions,” Matas told Wired magazine.

"Book apps created using the platform can take full advantage of all the features of the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, including touchscreen gestures, the microphone and the array of sensors."

So to read this new high technology ebook we need a tablet, not an ebook ereader. Tablet-enabled ebooks look exciting and very 'gee whiz'. 

"Tablets are far more powerful machines that not only offer the Kindle and Nook experience through apps, but include a wide range of other features within a similarly portable device."

“It’s between [ereaders] and tablet PCs, led by the advancing charge of the iPad.

"It’s a fight that ereaders will not win,” said a report from Forrester. “The reason is simple: Tablet PCs like the iPad are a new computing form factor -- a portable, comfortable, personal media and information device with the power to run whatever app developers can and will throw at it.” 

Fun and good old entertainment power the rush to tablets and away from e-ink readers. 

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