1st edition

Following an interesting conversation at dinner last night, I’m interested to find out if and when Ebook readers will replace old fashioned paper. It will be difficult as books have been at the heart of learning and leisure for centuries. Motivating people to consider an alternative will be challenging.

A fellow guest at the dinner holds the opinion that people will never accept electronics as replacement for books. The current situation seems to confirm this opinion. But we are missing a trend-setting device in the Ebook playground. Mp3 players had been out and about for years before Apple finally sealed the deal with its revolutionary iPod. Until then, it was impossible to discount CD’s as the primary mode of distributing music. Similarly, all we might need for Ebooks to enter the mainstream is a product marketed well enough and in the right places.

A few devices have been out and about for quite some time now. Amazon’s Kindle created a lot of buzz which died down quickly mainly due to its steep price.

With the launch of Kindle, e-paper (designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper) was thrust into the spotlight. But its inability to display colors turned out to be a downside that customers were not ready to overlook. But it would be safe to assume that many people will have their eyes set on a future version of the Kindle that does a bit more than connect to the web only to display in black and white.

Other companies have been cautious with making advances in the field. Sony and Waterstones have collaborated on their own reader which, so far, hasn’t fared much better than the Kindle.

A few days ago, the Kindle was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. Amazon is hoping that this will finally carry it to the limelight. But will customers think it a worthy investment?

University and high school students will surely be delighted at the prospect of carrying a single, lightweight reader instead of half a dozens textbooks. Purchasing e-books will also be simpler than scanning the bookstore shelves for hard copies. But at $400, the Kindle will struggle to fully convince this demographic. 

Many issues need to be addressed if Ebooks want to carve a niche in Education. Will most course books have readily available electronic versions? The Kindle doesn’t let you purchase books outside of Amazon.com. Will this lead to a format war? It’d be a pity if cash-deprived students were forced to carry 3 different readers because a single one was unable to support all required course books.

Some additional features that might enhance the appeal of an Ebook reader:

• highlighting and bookmarking
• note-taking software 
• touch-based drawing
• sharing and collaboration with others

The final blow to HD-DVD’s format-war effort against Sony’s Blu-ray came as Warner Bros. Studios announced that it would press high-definition movies only in the Blu-ray format. Ever since, most companies that had been aggressively campaigning for HD-DVD have retreated or switched camps. Toshiba, one of the prime supporters of the losing format has announced that it will cease production of HD-DVD players. Microsoft is considering Blu-ray extensions for the Xbox 360.

This turn of events is good news to consumers who had purchased Blu-ray players or had yet to make up their minds prior to the Warner Bros. announcement. However, disappointment will surely be rampant amongst those who purchased HD-DVD players. Giving up on HD-DVD must have been a difficult decision to arrive at but Toshiba is already moving to cut its losses. The company is reported to be negotiating the sale of factories that produce certain chips for Blu-ray players with Sony. It may or may not succeed in cutting its losses but consumers who eagerly purchased its HD-DVD players are surely the ones left begging for answers. Owners of HD-DVD equipment who wish to continue using high-definition content must now buy the equally pricey Blu-ray players.

Consumers who bought HD-DVD players were willing to pay the high prices for the promise of freely available content on the HD-DVD format. Shouldn’t companies that marketed, produced and sold HD-DVD players provide compensation to consumers who bought their products?

“A format war describes competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats, usually for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media, often forcing content publishers to “take sides” by supporting one format or the other.”

Format wars can be very expensive considering the heavy investments made in R&D, advertising and production. The muscle behind a format must convince people that its more suited to the needs of the present and the future. However, the benefits of having a format monopoly easily outweigh such investments.The videotape format war of the early 80’s between JVC’s Video Home Recording System (VHS) and Sony’s Betamax resulted in a big loss for the latter despite its “technological superiority”. It seems that Sony is determined to win this time around. For over a year, Sony’s Blu-ray disc has been engaged in a rough battle against the DVD consortium’s HD-DVD (backed by the likes of Toshiba and Microsoft).

The odds began to weigh-up in favor of Blu-ray after Blockbuster, America’s premier film-rental company, announced that it would shelf high-definition content only in the Blu-ray format. The announcement comes as a blow to the HD-DVD camp which has tried every trick in the book to outplay Sony and boost the sales of HD-DVD players.