Newspaper woes may boost e-reader sales
Later this month Amazon will release the Kindle DX, the largest version of its e-reader hardware, and the company’s Kindle 2 is already proving popular in the international market and growing slowly locally. But the Kindle is not the only player in what is still a fledgling market and is still hard to make money from. But, the numbers are growing.
Analysts at Citi Group estimate that Amazon sold as many as 500 000 Kindles over the course of 2008 and now has around 700 000 of the e-reader devices in the marketplace. Which is both significant for being a reasonably high number but still small in comparison with the millions of books the online retailer sells, 200 000 of which are available for the first and second generation Kindles.
The success of e-readers has, to date, been sketchy. Part of the reason is a combination of price and availability. The Kindle 2, released in February this year, is priced at a hefty $359 in the US and sells locally online for close to R5 000. Which makes it a significant purchase for most users, even more than a full-featured netbook. And at that price, the savings made on purchasing an e-book as opposed to an old school printed one are relatively insignificant. Unless you’re regularly buying 10 or so books a month it’s going to take a long time to redeem the R5 000 spent on the Kindle in the first place.
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The larger Kindle DX, scheduled to be released in the US on June 10, is also shipped with a hefty price tag of $489 (or upwards of R6 000 on local sites) but it does sport a larger screen than the Kindle 2 and is largely designed for reading newspapers and textbooks. The DX version sports a 9.7-inch screen which is a good third larger than the 6-inch version on the first and second generation Kindles.
The larger screen on the DX promises to be ideal for reading newspapers and, as the newspaper industry battles to find its place in the new era of the Internet, the DX may just prove to be a lifesaver, if the price of the device can somehow be brought down to a more appealing level. The DX presentation makes it possible for newspapers to still offer readers their traditional layout and presentation without the associated printed paper. Which, for many readers, is exactly what they want. And despite rumours that the DX would ship with a colour screen, the device in fact has a grayscale one which, interestingly, may actually add some additional “old-school” feel to the device when reading newspaper sites.
But the Kindle is not the only player in the market for e-readers. Leading the challenge to Amazon’s devices is Sony’s offering, followed by a wide array of other players including Plastic Logic’reader, and the Cool-er e-reader. The best of the lot, and the most popular is the Sony e-reader, which is available in a few different configurations and prices start at around $300 for the entry-level version and up to $400 for the high-end version. But, for the extra money the Sony e-reader includes a touch screen as well as night-illumination.
But again, for upwards of R3 000 the Sony e-reader is an expensive reading option, just as is the Kindle. All of which will make e-readers something of a non-starter in the South African market until prices are reduced significantly.
E-reader Kindle DX discussion
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