Why the Mac Tablet won't kill ebook readers

Excitement over the yet-to-be Mac Tablet has made some suggest it may kill off ebook readers. Here's why it won't, and why we'll see changes in ebook readers in the coming years.

At present, ebook readers are fairly new. There are varying file formats, you may even have to pay to put your own content on, and the lines between content provider (books) and hardware supplier (ebook reader) is blurred. That will go the way of AOL vs. Compuserve. It's a ridiculous model and when ebook readers move beyond the niche publishers won't need to stand for that. Plus, they'll see the economic benefit of being nice to the consumer (otherwise they'll just buy someone else's book), and being 'cross platform' compatible, or more accurately, not crippled by greedy, unnecessary file formats just created to make products only work in one place.

Hardware manufacturers of ebook readers (even if they're not physically making them, that's the game they're in - the control over content is a fleeting possession), such as Sony, Amazon, etc. are trying to augment their ebook readers to increase profit margins and secure market control. We're seeing wifi, 3G, gigantic sizes, etc. These things will matter less and less, as well.

To see why, look at portable DVD players. You can certainly play DVDs on a laptop, and then you'd have so many more options. You could rip and store, do interactive stuff that requires a network connection, tweet about the movie, whatever. And yet, no one considers buying a laptop as a portable DVD player. Portable DVD players do what they are supposed to do well enough, inexpensively and easily. For $150 or less you can get a great portable DVD player that your 5 year old can operate on their own. It does enough, is probably more rugged than a laptop, and is at least a third of the price and half the size.

Expect to see ebook readers standardized. There will be higher end ones, just like you can get an iPod if you want rather than one of the dozens of other MP3 players. But just as you can get a 2GB MP3 player for $10-20, so you'll be able to buy ebook readers that will work perfectly well and be dirt cheap. A $2000+ tablet computer will have as much to do with this as a laptop does to a portable DVD player.