A Banner Year for eReaders
Jinfo Blog

13th October 2009

By Nancy Davis Kho

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Last week Forrester Research its "Forrester’s eReader Holiday Outlook 2009" and the message is bound to cheer anyone involved in digital reading technology. Analyst Sarah Rotman Epps says that in the coming holiday season, eReaders will be a breakout success, driven by lower prices, improved features, and the increasing amount of content available. According to the report, "We now anticipate sell-through in 2009 of 3 million units —up from our previous estimate of 2 million units — with 900,000 units selling during the holiday season,w hich Forrester defines as November and December. Based on a number of factors, we expect sales in 2010 to double, bringing cumulative sales of eReaders to 10 million by year-end 2010." Sales are expected to be dominated by Amazon's Kindle technology, anticipated to have a nearly 60% market share; the Sony Reader is the second major player, and smaller device manufacturers like Foxit, Interead, and IREX will account for approximately 5% of US market sales. Of course dedicated devices are only a part of the picture, and publishers are really starting to experiment with ways to get a piece of the future of publishing. On Sept. 29th Disney Publishing announced the introduction of Disney Digital Books, a subscription service offering unlimited online access to 500+ new and classic Disney Books ( http://digbig.com/5baknt). And on October 1 publisher Simon and Schuster (http://www.simonandschuster.com) announced a partnership with Vook (http://www.vook.com), a San Francisco Bay Area-based company offering a video/book hybrid platform wherein videos are integrated with text to enhance rather than replace the experience of online reading. Just in time for this explosion of consumer demand and vendor creativity comes the eBook Summit from Media Bistro, scheduled for December 15-16 in NYC (http://digbig.com/5baknw). With speakers like Steve Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reading Business division and Brandon Badger, Product Manager for Google Books, it should be an excellent opportunity to catch up on the current and future directions of eReaders…and get some holiday shopping done.

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