E-readers manage to survive?

E Ink published their January financial results, and the revenue was about $48 million – which is a 63% drop compared to last year (and 11% drop compared to December). Despite this the company is still expected to post revenues of over NT$40 billion in 2012 – a 5% increase over 2011. Some web sites are reporting that this marks the "end of the e-reader" – with tablets clearly winning the race. This is an interesting debate. Most people agree that a dedicated e-paper reader is far better as a reading device (because of the screen quality, sunlight readability, weight, cost and battery life) – but Tablets are obviously much more versatile.

Meanwhile, Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley has published his 2012 forecasts for the Kindle. He sees Amazon selling just 24 million e-reader Kindles – his previous estimate was 28.6 million. He also expects Amazon to sell 14.9 million Kindle Fires (up from 12.7 million in his earlier estimates). Interestingly, by the way, E Ink is supplying the display for the Fire as well.

Personally I love my Kindle e-reader – much better than the Kindle Fire. I find reading on an LCD to be quite annoying, and it's also too heavy for me to hold for long periods (it's more than double the weight of the Kindle Touch). I think that most people who actually want to read will prefer the e-reader, and 24 million devices in 2012 is still a very large market for Amazon.

source: UberGizmo, DailyFinance