NYtimes has a feature story on how mobiles are posing a threat to e-reader devices such as Amazon’s Kindle.
With Amazon’s Kindle, readers can squeeze hundreds of books into a device that is smaller than most hardcovers. For some, that’s not small enough.
Travis Bryant, with his daughter, Ivey, reading “The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril” on his iPhone at their home in Alabama.
Many people who want to read electronic books are discovering that they can do so on the smartphones that are already in their pockets — bringing a whole new meaning to “phone book.” And they like that they can save the $250 to $350 that they would otherwise spend on yet another gadget.
“These e-readers that cost a lot of money only do one thing,” said Keishon Tutt, a 37-year-old pharmacist in Texas who buys 10 to 12 books a month to read on her iPhone, from Apple. “I like to have a multifunctional device. I watch movies and listen to my songs.”
Over the last eight months, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and a range of smaller companies have released book-reading software for the iPhone and other mobile devices. One out of every five new applications introduced for the iPhone last month was a book, according to Flurry, a research firm that studies mobile trends.
All of that activity raises a question: Does the future of book reading lie in dedicated devices like the Kindle, or in more versatile gadgets like mobile phones? So far, e-book software for phones does not appear to have cut into demand for single-function e-readers. According to the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry, about 1.7 million people now own one, and that number could rise to four million by the end of the holiday season.
But there are already 84 million smartphones that can run applications in the United States alone, according to IDC, a research firm. Apple has sold more than 50 million iPhones and iPod Touches, which both run e-book software.
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