e-Readers doomed? Beware of judgemental journalists....

e-Book Readers don't stand a chance, sez C:net:

The only way e-book readers will emerge from their current state of irrelevance is if the manufacturers of the device decide to make them free or as close as possible to free and then make their money on the e-books. At that point, consumers would be more than happy to pick up a Kindle or a Sony Reader and buy cheaper books at their leisure. And by doing that, everyone wins: the installed base will increase dramatically, e-books will sell far more copies than previously imagined and the niche market could finally become a mainstream alternative to print books.

Until then, this industry has no promise. Let's face it -- if you can buy a book for $30, why would you spend over $300 just to be able to read it?

The economics of the e-book reader industry are off and so far, no one in the business has realized it. It's time they wake up and see what's really going on.

I apologise in advance, but this is making me grumpy because it is so adamant a post, and yet shows a level of disregard of both the economics and the emerging technology that makes me think the author is not that familiar with the latest developments in the field.

We did a piece of work last year on the future of e-Books and e-Readers for Plastic Logic, a manufacturer of state of the art plastic paper, and if you look at the trajectory of that technology you know that its coming over the next few years. The Kindle is 5 year old technology (at least) re-hashed, but the next generation is a different thing entirely.

As for the economics, this is classical, well, classical thinking.

An e-Book doesn't need to be manufactured so will sell for less than a paper book (and let us not mention bitTorrent), and many of the early use cases will be pro-sumers and corporate types where its not a book, but a pad with X'00 papers and magazines to read on business trips etc,