Network Effect

E-Readers: The Fun Is Just Starting

This industry is application based, not hardware based. Therefore, a large manufacturer (aka Apple) with a large ecosystem around their devices will win the hardware end of game. I agree, eBooks is going mainstream, just not as a standalone device. It is going mainstream as an application that will be a part of a larger ecosystem. As for the application side, my instincts tell me content providers will eventually go direct through the ecosystem because there will be too many mouths to feed. But they may win this game for a little while and may in fact be the software provider who wins this game. But there are some big names (aka Google) going after this space as well so we will see.