Just looking over the recent news clips on e-Book Readers (EBRs) should convince any bystander that this category is "exploding" as described in one headline (TWICE July 20). Industry experts expect growth from 1% penetration in 2008 growing to as much as 33% in five years. That’s one million growing to 32M by 2014. By the end of 2009, the US market alone will be about 4M units. This forecast is in line with Insight Media’s forecast on e-book reader numbers, which predict 20M units by 2013 (see Insight Media’s 2009 EBR Report).

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

Analysts are also predicting a compound annual growth rate of about 36.4% for the top selling Amazon Kindle, which will go from about 2M to 8.5M by 2010. Forecasting an individual product alone is risky since something can come along "altering the entire calculus of the marketplace." That something, according to a recent Wired Magazine article is the alleged Apple tablet combined with the company’s iTunes distribution network which touches "…millions of devices already, potentially billions."

What they describe is not so much a "tablet" as a hybrid device, something between a netbook and iPhone / iTouch on steroids. The product allegedly sports a 10-inch x 7-inch multi-touch color screen. That’s large enough to display an album cover in all its glory, crisp enough to show slick photos from a National Geographic (or WSJ) subscription and cool enough to watch full blown films, perhaps streaming from the Internet cloud—and certainly big enough to read War and Peace cover to cover. Wireless download connectivity is allegedly through Verizon as opposed to AT&T, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone.

EJ Robins in the blog (TheHotSpring.com) said "It looks like the device could be set up to compete in nearly all media: it will play music and is said to have a new focus on large-format album artwork, possibly a way to make the music listening experience more interactive and tempt consumers to buy whole albums again. The Financial Times reports that ‘Recording industry executives’ relayed the information that Apple has such a strategy in place for an upcoming release."

But this isn’t really about hardware. Apple consistently pushes the boundaries of the "old-think" with new and creative approaches that inspire and motivate change. In the process, Apple is getting rich by delivering what customers really want.

Where we’re going here, is breaking down the silos of content and more importantly distribution of all packaged media, yes, including books. Apple creates new models that challenge the status quo. For example, did Apple really know that a two-finger touch with accelerometer sensor and a high resolution display in a hand held smart phone (iPhone) would empower the next wave in mobile gaming—to the detriment of Sony’s PSP? If so, they are smarter than we think, but perhaps this is just one more unintended consequence of Adam Smith’s "invisible hand."

Steve Jobs and crew are notorious for shaking things up. In a kind of altruistic mission that has won the hearts and mindshare of millions of died-in-the-wool Apple fans, the company looks at the way things are, often convoluted and misshaped by profit-driven corporate policies that have little to do with serving the wants and needs of the customer—and does a re-think that "changes everything."

This is one reason why the company doesn’t need to stoop to media stunts, like T-Mobile’s recent parachute drop over San Francisco to launch the latest Google Android My Phone. Apple garners its own impressive media attention by creating blockbuster lines of customers cueing up the day before in cities all around the world, to actually buy the next hot product the day it launches. What a concept!

Readers fear not, the EBR market is alive and well and we think amidst its media hype it will deliver its print content to the masses. Just how this will all play out is yet to be determined. These are exciting times and perhaps we won’t have to wait long to see the effect of status quo versus "new think," even when the status quo includes new-age digital readers such as Kindle. Now where’s the back of the line to buy that cool new tablet…?