“iPod of eReaders” yet to come
Almost 1 in 3 people think an eBook Reader is a good idea according to a survey of over 3000 people conducted in early 2009.
The online survey, undertaken by NBT Research showed this figure had “rocketed” compared with only 23% favouring eBooks in a face to face survey last year.
CEO of NBT Research, William Higham, has worked as a trend consultant for the last seven years.
He suggests that the design of eReaders needs to be further enhanced if developers want them to be as successful as the mp3 player.
Early mp3 players “were quite complicated”, he says. “Some were better than others. It wasn’t clear which ones were good. They all had different formats. They hadn’t got one definitive digital format. Also, there wasn’t a particularly good method of uploading music onto them and it wasn’t that easy to buy music for them.”
The introduction of the iPod combined with iTunes caused a spike in sales of mp3 players and caught the attention of consumers.
“What the iPod did is that - it was simple", Mr Higham explains, "It looked good. It provided something that other things hadn’t and iTunes itself was something that provided lots of content. I think those sorts of things all need to occur before the eReader really takes off. I don’t think we’ve yet seen the iPod of eReaders”.
He says "the reason it’s not taken off yet is as much to do with design and marketing as it is with the concept.” He also predicts a media pad, possibly developed by Apple, will be available in the near future.
