E-Readers Set to Take World by Storm
August 9, 2009 by Mark Ellis
Filed under Business
Whereas at one point they seemed like an impractical luxury that would never catch on, e-readers, such as the popular Amazon Kindle unveiled in 2007, may soon be as become a major player in the electronics industry. As more and more competitors enter the market to try to unseat the Kindle as the most popular e-reader, consumers will see prices fall and availability skyrocket.
Analysts do not expect e-readers to approach the popularity of MP3 players, which quickly achieved 50 million sales within five years of their introduction. However, analysts are expecting the number of e-readers to rapidly increase, ending up at 13 million sold by 2013 from about 1 million sold by the end of last year.
One of the big questions that remains is whether or not e-readers for educational purposes will ever catch on. There are over 63 million students, from kindergarten through college, in the United States, so the introduction of e-readers into the classroom would be a huge boon for e-reader developers.
Image: Flickr
