Photo: goXunuReviews / Flickr

In a fascinating interview with the Cnet Crave blog, Ian Freed, a vice president over at Amazon, claimed Amazon held 70-80 per cent of the eBooks market, as well as revealing a host of other tidbits on the Kindle business.

The market share truths and lies

The very first thing Ian Freed revealed is Amazon’s ‘double triple’. The first of which is ‘the number of e-books sold in the first quarter of 2009 versus the first quarter of 2010’ which saw the latter period’s volume triple over the former. Amazing. He added that ‘the other is after we dropped the price of the Kindle to $189, we saw a tripling of the growth rate year over year [of the device itself].’ Remarkable what a price drop does for an eBooks reader, or any product, huh?

Freed also spoke about market share, wherein he said Amazon owned 70-80 per cent of the market, even though Barnes & Noble claimed to own 20 per cent and Apple 20 per cent. Coyly Freed offers that ‘something doesn’t add up’ and that he encourages the interviewer ‘to do some research’ on the matter. We’ve done our own research in the past, and can attest to at least one of those Amazon competitors duking the stats.

User distribution

Ian Freed also went into details about what percentage of Kindle store users are actually Amazon Kindle owners. From Amazon’s findings, ‘80 percent of Kindle books we sell are sold to Kindle owners’, therefore 20 per cent do not own a Kindle device. They’re purchasing Kindle books from other apps hosted on smartphones, PCs, and tablet computers. This, explains Freed, in indicative of ‘…the health of both businesses. The device business continues to grow with a device [the second-generation Kindle] that’s over a year old, and then the content is growing both with the device sales and independently with the apps’.

iPad denial, and market share fabrications

The interrogators interviewers over at Crave asked Mr. Freed the inevitable iPad question, which he then roundly dismissed. Similar to Amazon’s strategy in the past, he simply calls it a different kind of device, which Amazon loves because people purchase goods off of the digital retailer using it. He then goes on to discuss why it’s an inferior reading device to the Kindle. It’s almost as if Amazon’s strategy is to ignore it, hoping it will go away.

What we make of this

Outside the very slight iPad deflection, this interview is riveting stuff if you care about this eBook readers space.

This Crave interview is commendable for getting Freed to speak so freely about the Kindle business. Granted when you’re winning, it’s easy being open and candid, but this interview is ‘child locked in the candy store’ stuff for stats junkies and eBooks lovers both. It’s well worth a complete read to get further insights into the future of the Amazon Kindle business and the eBook readers business in general.

Photo: Barnes & Noble

If, for whatever reason, you still didn’t think eBooks and e-readers were here to stay, here’s a shock to your system: Barnes & Noble Inc., the US’s biggest books retail chain, has just put itself up for sale. The real kicker is the growing sales of digital books are partly to blame.

For sale sign erected

After continued pressure from shareholder activists Barnes & Noble Inc. has put itself up for sale, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The company announced that a continuously falling stock priced forced the group to think through all alternatives, ‘Including a potential sale’.

The primary reason for the somewhat unexpected yet not-altogether-surprising sale is the meteoric rise of digital books and their respective e-readers as a viable platform, as well as more and more book lovers ordering their titles online. This meant that foot traffic to the stores declined steadily, putting revenue pressure on the group in step. Effectively, as has been evident for years but has only really come to fore recently, Amazon has wrecked their business.

Potential buyers

With Barnes & Noble Inc. having 720 stores across the United States, 637 stores on college campuses and a grand brand name, the company is attractive to various suitors. Leonard Riggio, the group’s founder and chairman, may be forming a group of investors to purchase the company, and a multitude of private equity firms are expected to be in the running, too.

What’s the benefit?

What do potential suitors stand to gain? A fair amount, actually. The aforementioned brand pull and reach of the group is a great motivator, as is the promising Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader platform. Sure, Amazon has trail blazed ahead and has put some distance between itself and competitors, but the Barnes & Noble Nook (and the iPad) have confirmed that Amazon is not the de facto e-reader yet.
What matters in this story is that eBooks and e-readers are big, big business. Big enough, in fact, to force the hand of America’s biggest books chain.

Photo: Stock.Xchng

A recent Nielsen Norman Group study has found that using e-readers results in reduced reading speed, while the absolute volume of content you read increases.

Micro-study

The micro-study, which had a small sample group of 24 self-professed avid readers read a bunch of books spanning multiple reading platforms. The study found that those who read e-readers can read as much as 11 per cent more slowly than when they read from the good old ink-on-paper format.

More specifically, using paper books as the reference point, it was found that those reading on an iPad read 6.25 per cent slower and those reading from the Amazon Kindle e-readers read, on average, 11 per cent slower. This could be down to time lost waiting for the page to refresh once you’ve turned them, or, less complicated, the nuances of reading on a digital platform versus a static paper one.

Bitesized consumption

What the study does not account for is how e-readers have changed how people read and how much they read. With a breast pocket-sized device that can store your entire library, it’s far more likely you’ll do reading in between commutes or during special ‘breaks’, and so on. This results in significantly more reading done in the long run. And there is no measure of the difference textbooks in eBook readers will do for the back health of a span of college students no longer carrying heavy satchels in the decades to come. If you’ve been there, you know what we mean.

The benefit of this finding

Photo: Amazon

Though this is obviously a bad thing for the speed readers among us, this could have great bearing for academic reading. That is, assuming reading the same material slower – on one device than a regular book – results in you taking in and retaining information better than by even a smidgen. If that is the case, eBook readers may be a worthwhile investment.

Being marketed to go

Dedicated eBooks readers are also becoming increasingly more affordable. Whether it is iPad response time, or just market pressure, we’ve seen Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook and the Sony Daily Edition drop in price over the last few weeks. It’s the slow crawl towards what some have called the ‘paperback ebook readers’, devices that have zero added features but are priced to go, so as to get as many people as possible using them.

Not that we think you would bother to do statistical research, but have you found you read slower on your e-reader than you do a regular old book? And do you read more now that you do have an eBooks reader? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo: Amazon

So much for claims that the stand-alone ebook reader is on deathwatch, with worldwide shipments of the e-reader exceeding 740,000. The Barnes & Noble Nook leads in numbers with the Amazon Kindle trailing in second.

Barnes & Noble’s

Before confusing what these ‘shipments’ represent, it is important to note that Digitimes Research isn’t talking about sales from retailers to customers, but rather from suppliers to retailers. Of the 740,000, Barnes & Noble shipped 37 per cent while the Amazon Kindle shipments accounting for only 16 per cent, according to the research firm. This figure does not include the iPad.

The swell in B&N Nook sales is as a result of the massive retail chain Barnes & Noble has, being North America’s largest books store chain, coupled with a heavy marketing push behind the device. The reason for the seeming lack in Amazon Kindle numbers is, according to Digitimes Research, in line with expectations that Amazon is reducing inventory in anticipation of a newer Kindle device due sometime in July or August.

Downward pressure on prices

Photo: Amazon

In related news, Barnes & Noble has dropped the price of its B&N Nook e-reader in the US, while also introducing a new cheaper model. The price of the e-reader with wi-fi and 3G (the original Nook) is now $199 (about £135), a $60 drop from its original price tag of $259 (about £212). The new model, which drops 3G for wi-fi only support, costs $150, radically undercutting the price of most ebook reader devices on the market at present.

This aggressive pricing regime may be the first step towards what some have called the ‘paperback’ ebook reader – a super cheap eBook to get the device into many people’s hands so as to use the platform as a content delivery service. Considering the B&N Nook is tethered to the B&N store, as is the Amazon Kindle to the Kindle store, this approach to pushing volume at tiny margins makes sense if you have engaged customers to always sell content to.

A shipment of 740,000 across the industry in over two months is certainly no run-away success, but it does prove a viable business model no less.

Photo: Amazon

Amazon, and educators, were hoping the Kindle DX would do well in an academic environment. But this isn’t the case. A Kindle ‘experiment’ has shown that students don’t like the e-book reader when it comes to the classroom.

The Kindle ‘experiment’

The Darden Business School at the University of Virginia in the US is close to the end of its Kindle ‘experiment’, and it’s already concluding that students don’t like the Kindle at school. A handful of schools besides Darden took part in a trial run with the Kindle DX in classes to see if students would respond well. And, they didn’t.

Arizona State University also recently ran a programme looking into the Kindle DX, and they weren’t impressed either. Princeton, too, was underwhelmed, and one student, interviewed by the Daily Princetonian, described the e-book reader as a ‘poor excuse of an academic tool’.

But all’s not lost for the e-book reader

Photo: Amazon

While the Kindle isn’t doing so well at school, with 75-80 per cent of students answering ‘no’ when asked in a survey whether they would recommend the Kindle to new MBA students, Amazon must have breathed a sigh of relief when 90-95 per cent of students who took part in the survey said ‘yes’, they would definitely recommend the device for personal reading.

But, despite students not expressing interest in using the Kindle in the classroom, educators at Darden aren’t completely giving up on the e-book reader. They just don’t think the Kindle DX is the right device for students. Hoping to have zero waste by 2020, the school is looking into digital options wherever possible, and did note that some – albeit not that many – students did use the Kindle exclusively for learning purposes.

It’s clear e-readers are very popular in non-academic environments, though. Nook, the iPad and Borders’ Kobo are offering customers a wide range of options, and despite its failure in the academic realm, the Kindle is still alive and kicking.

Photo:Amazon

Many will argue that the iPad and Nook have left the Kindle pretty much obsolete, but that hasn’t stopped a new update being rolled out late this month. Quite a few new features are included in the software update 2.5, with the biggest being Twitter and Facebook integration.

What’s on offer

Photo: Facebook

The Kindle update offers a few new features, some pretty nifty, others not very exciting. Among the better offerings are pan and zoom on PDF, to help you see the small print or tables on PDF docs, Facebook and Twitter integration, and ‘Collections’, which allows you to organise your documents and books into folders so they’re easier to find. A new feature that should have been there all along will allow you to password protect your Kindle, but the other features aren’t that impressive. ‘Popular Highlights’ will let you see what the rest of the Kindle community finds interesting, and bigger fonts might make your Kindle experience a little easier on the eye.

Nothing on the competition

Photo: Apple

The Kindle still won’t have the features that make the iPad more popular than this device. It should have a touchscreen. Then, a colour screen would have been a nice addition. Finally, the Kindle update should allow you to play other media – the ‘experimental’ MP3 support on offer is, at the very least, unimpressive. A more usable browser would have been a good idea. And finally, why aren’t there a whole lot of apps available for download?

Trying to stay relevant

Trying to stay relevant in the face of serious competition from Nook and the iPad is what this Kindle update is all about. None of the new features are mindblowing individually, but together they will address some of the complaints Kindle users have about the device. Still, there’s a whole lot missing, and it’s unlikely that this update is going to attract a new fan base.

The update is available free for second generation Kindle users, but Kindle 1 users will, sadly, be left in the dark on this one.

Photo: Que

Plastic Logic has launched a device that’s perfect for the corporate life – the Que e-reader. The device only has one button (the home button), making it completely touch orientated. The device also called a Pro Reader supports all the formats needed in the business world including PDF files, Microsoft Office documents and ePub publications. The Que is made with plastic electronic technology, allowing the Que e-reader to lightweight, sleek and simple to use.

Features to use at work

With the Que e-reader you can subscribe to all the leading newspapers and magazines including the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribunal, Sporting News Today and many more. The Pro Reader is aimed at people who need to read for a work more than leisure. Instead of wasting money and time on printing costs, transfer files onto the Que and display them with clarity on the high quality LCD screen. The 8.5 by 11 inch screen is easy to read, and documents can be edited with a stylus. The home page reveals important applications like a calendar spreadsheet and drop-down menus. The Pro reader software allows its users to move files from PC, Mac and BlackBerry content straight onto the Que.

Choose your connection

Photo: Que

Plastic Logic has made two Que e-readers differing in Internet connection. One is connected via wi-fi, but only supports 4GB of internal memory, which can hold up to 35,000 documents. The other has a 3G connection and has more storage space at 8GB, which will be able to store an impressive 75,000 files. The wireless support offers the same features, subscriptions to publications and extremely quick download options. The Pro reader supports Que TruVue standard – which uses Adobe Reader, and gives the device the look and feel of a real newspaper, making it look more professional and modern.

What to expect

The fact that the Que e-reader is aimed at corporate types may decrease the appeal for some, and most people may prefer a regular e-reader. The Que isn’t colour screen, and may be a bit slow when ‘turning the page,’ and with all the smart features and sleek design, the Que is expected to be rather expensive. Besides that, the Que is a smart, elegant Pro Reader with loads of features and wireless options. The nice part of the Que is that it’s modest. It doesn’t appear flashy and looks just like a normal piece of paper. The Que e-reader was supposed to be hitting the shelves in April, but the company has had to push the release date to sometime this summer.

Photo: Samsung

For those who want to read on the go, eBooks are the perfect solution. With the ability to store hundreds of books these gadgets, similar in size to the average paperback, also offer Internet and email access. Choosing the right model may come down to picking a brand that works for you, though.

What Features Should I Look for in an eBooks Reader?

The best eBook reader is easy to carry, has a long battery life, and can be read in any environment – whether you’re on a sunny beach or around the campfire. LED lighting, touch screens, and the Read to Me feature on the Kindle 2 make reading a pleasure. Screen size and wireless capability are also important features to think about, as is E-ink technology. E-ink is a special kind of digital paper that uses very little power to be displayed, keeping you reading for longer.

Content

Because many models have similar features, a very important thing to think about when choosing an eBook reader is what kind of reading material you’re after. Amazon claims to have the biggest range of titles, boasting over 285 000 popular books, while eBooks.com is a viable alternative. While Amazon’s Kindle is  not the original wireless reader, it is the first to achieve mass market success, while Sony’s more recent models have the advantage in being compatible with all books on eBooks, as well as open source books on the web. Virtually all eBook readers support HTML, .txt, MP3 and JPG files.

Value for Money

The best eBook readers have the latest features, allow you to read what you want to, and don’t come with a hefty price tag. At the top of the range are Amazon’s latest Kindle 2 and Sony’s Reader Daily Edition. Both are quite pricey, with the Kindle 2 coming in at around £200 and Sony’s Daily Edition being priced at £245, but both have great features. Amazon’s Kindle 2 has a slightly smaller, not fully touch, screen, and a slightly shorter battery life. Both models have 3G wireless Internet connectivity and make use of E-ink technology. An alternative eBook reader is the BeBook Reader (£179), which is lightweight and has a battery life of 9 000 pages, but doesn’t have a touch screen.

There’s a world of choice in the booming world of eBooks readers, and choosing the right one for you is well worth the time spent researching your options. With Amazon claiming that ‘millions’ of people have bought their Kindle since it came out two years ago, you won’t be the only one on the beach reading from a digital screen.

The Kindle eBook Reader is an amazing device that is manufactured by amazon.com. It is an e-reader which helps you to read online books without connecting any other device with it. It is one of the most famous e-book readers available in the market. It is available in a stylish white colour which makes it look sophisticated and attractive. It is very compact as well and you can easily carry and store it. The device is provided with a wide screen which offers crystal clear graphics.

The Kindle eBook Reader is actually a 3G wireless device which enables you to download books from the internet. It is supported in over 100 different countries which enhances the functionality. The device is 1/3rd of an inch in width and is very thin which makes it look pretty attractive. It is very light in weight and only measures around 10.2 ounces. The eBook reader can be set up in less than 60 seconds and there is no computer required for setting it up. The best thing is that you don’t have to pay any monthly fees or download charges. Another very helpful feature is that you can read the e-book reader even in the sunlight.

The Kindle eBook Reader is a library in itself as it can carry over 1500 books at once. The device is fitted with a spectacular rechargeable battery which offers a long battery back up and a hassle free performance. You also have an amazing text to speech feature and you can even read newspaper and magazines on it.

Tags for this article: ebook reader, eBook Readers, kindle ebook

With everything going digital and on the move, the eBook readers are also being manufactured on the same track. The latest tend which is to be seen is of Portable eBook Reader which will be an ideal travelling partner for all those who love reading books. This king of eBook reader allows you to enjoy your journey and spend some leisure time reading books electronically.

The Portable eBook Reader is being manufactured by leading brands and is widely available in markets with great variety to offer. It offers great way of relaxation combined with excitement and craze to all the eBook readers. Some of the most sought after Portable eBook Reader include the Sony PRS-505S with 6.0 inch display. Compatible with formats like TXT, RTF, PDF, DOC, MPS and JPG, this reader offers hard drive space of 20MB and internal memory of 128MB.

The Endless Ideas BeBook is another Portable eBook Reader offering a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels. This stylish reader is compatible with JPF, GIF, RAR, ZIP and MP3 formats. It also allows you to save data up to 512 MB and is actually a rather cheap eBook reader. If you are looking for more expensive models with bigger displays, then you can choose from the iRex Digital Reader 1000s featuring 10.2 inch display with an excellent resolution of 1024 x 1280 pixels and supports formats including PDF, TXT, HTML, PNG, GIF and TIF. Another great product in this range is iRex iLiad Book Edition.

You can make your choice from the wide range of Portable eBook Reader available and add more excitement and relaxation to your journey. Other choices can be Interead Cool-ER 2009, Bookeen CyBook OPUS,
Sony Reader PRS-300 and many more. The leading brands manufacturing portable readers are Sony, Interead, Bookeen, Endless Idea and iRex.