Word: readerly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...early stages have lasted a long time. E-readers have been around for more than a decade, but the devices weren't popular due to high cost, proprietary display formats and the reluctance of book publishers to sell digital versions of their best-selling titles. Now, just as digital music was driven into the mainstream by Apple's iPod and iTunes, Amazon's Kindle and online bookstore, which sells more than 350,000 titles, are proving there's a mass market for e-books. Total industry revenue from digital-book downloads has risen 149% this year, according to the Association...
...That kind of growth is hard to come by in the recession-wracked technology industry, and a crowd is starting to gather. Around the world, at least 17 e-readers are in development or already on the market. Among the better-known entrants is Asustek - the Taiwanese company practically invented the netbook category with its ASUS Eee-PC, and it is working on a product called the Eee-reader that it hopes to have on the market in time for Christmas. South Korea's two powerhouse consumer-electronics companies, Samsung and LG Electronics, are wading in too. Samsung earlier this...
...just tech companies that are joining the fray. Bricks-and-mortar bookseller Barnes & Noble, which in the U.S. offers access to 750,000 e-books on its website, is rumored to be pondering the development of its own e-reader to rival the Kindle. (The retailer already has a partnership to sell e-readers made by IREX, a spin-off of Holland's Royal Philips Electronics.) Major newspaper and magazine publishers, which are suffering mightily from the loss of subscribers and advertisers to the recession and the Internet, are also getting involved. News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, owner...
...reason e-readers are getting traction is that competition is driving down prices. Amazon has cut the price of the Kindle by $100 over the past six months, to $259. As e-readers proliferate and price disparities narrow, manufacturers are trying to differentiate their products by adding features such as MP3 players and touch screens. The eSlick by Foxit, based in Fremont, Calif., allows users to listen to songs while reading. Asustek recently unveiled a prototype e-reader with two screens, which would more closely duplicate the traditional reading experience, although the device that the company expects to release later...
...same time, new display technologies are emerging that promise to improve battery life and make devices more portable and easier to read. U.K.-based Plastic Logic hopes to introduce next year the first e-reader with a plastic screen that will reduce glare and be less prone to cracking when dropped by ham-fisted owners. Electronic-ink technology is set to move from black and white to color by the end of 2010. Even video is on the horizon. "We'll see a range of models start to appear over the first half of 2010" offering "a range of different...