Custom Search
|
|
The Ereader Revolution Takes Over Ces And Can Have Big Impact On Publishing Marketplace.
Here come’s the eReader Revolution and it will stop the presses! At the Consumer Electronic’s show in Las Vegas there is a group, a gaggle, a grip of eReaders with shiny, slick, sumptuous surfaces. Websites are bursting with PDF’s touting the connectivity, the storage, and the software that make the eReader “like paper, only better.” Try a Google search on eReader and you will find more pictures and introductions than on eHarmony. An eReader is the new 11” x 8.5” x 0.3” surfboard that let’s you read newspapers, books and magazines, play games, listen and download music, and perhaps do something associated with work. In an article by Reuters, “Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Doug Reid estimated the overall tablet hardware market in 2010 at $3.5 billion to $5.3 billion, rising to $30 billion by 2014.” Dear Mr. Newspaper Executive, I highly advise you to sell your content NOW! to an eReader hardware manufacturer. Choose wisely! You are about to betroth your product to a technology that is evolving in real time. You will now refer to yourself as a “Content Partner.” Get used to it and grab the market share. If you don’t, it will be like every other boat you watched sail away from the pier of profitability. Don’t bother with the black and white little PDA look-a-likes, just maximize your screen size, resolution, and color capabilities. Think of it as your little dirty advertising secret. You're going to sell ads on this thing and you need to wear the right dress to the party. Take a look at how successful companies have married content with hardware. Apple has become the shining jewel of vertical integration; Time warner and AOL not so much. Apple is about to launch it’s eReader (what rumors intimate) will be called the iSlate. The ponies are lining up. Que from Plastic Logic boasts the largest screen-size for an eReader and already has newspaper, magazine, and book publishing content partners. Most major computer manufacturers are clanging their circuits in an attempt to launch some prototype to get a foothold in the marketplace and publications should arrange this marriage immediately. The naysayers argue that the costs of the units are too high. How much did a cell phone cost when they first came out? Oh what’s that you say? You now get one free with your service contract? The socio-economic elite drive the prototypes, as it always does, and we will get the lower cost versions as they are subsidized by the content and advertising providers. I believe the price point will eventually fall between a cell phone and a computer. That niche has a great potential for growth specifically for newspapers, magazines, ebooks, ezines, and photobooks whose paper-produced versions have reached an end of their shelf-life. They are in need of a vehicle to reach consumers because the hardware solution to their distribution problem, has arrived. Accessibility to a variety of publications and processes is the key. Think about the possibilities of reading the WSJ, Huffington’s, Vanity Fair, your favorite blogs, listening to music of the Claudia Quintet, looking at a photography retrospective of Ray K. Metzker, on a screen the size of a magazine while on your train ride to work. Warning! This experience may be addicting! Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Tomas Ovalle, Principal of Tomas Ovalle Photography www.tomasovalle.com www.tomasovallephoto/blog Tomas Ovalle is an-award winning Editorial photographer in Central California with a creative eye and writing style that is thought-provoking and illuminating. Tomas creates Portraits and Editorial Photography and writes about his work and industry trends in his blog entitled the PhotOracle. |
|