The Wall Street Journal claims that E-readers will die

The 2012-year sales of E-readers have plunged, and the Wall Street Journal says E-readers will die. However, there are also comments that the existence of e-readers is not dependent on the hardware of the profit, but sell books, and its performance will continue to evolve, core competitiveness is becoming more and more obvious.

2012 has become the past, and the Wall Street Journal article reviews the development of e-readers over the past year and looks to its future. The article's argument is negative, the difference does not at the end directly to the electronic reader "doomed to perish". According to market research firm IDC and IHS Isuppli, E-reader sales peaked in 2011, but fell sharply in 2012 years and will remain in decline.

The reasons set out in the Wall Street Journal are standard, E-readers will face a powerful challenge for tablets: Users can also read e-books on full-featured tablets, and the price gap between tablets and e-readers is getting smaller, so buying a single, functional E-reader (like the Kindle Paperwhite or the Nook is more and more unnecessary.

The article claims that once rage technology or products are exiting the stage of history. This conclusion is provocative, and we would rather explore the actual situation.

First, e-readers aren't going to disappear anytime soon, at least until cheap tablets match the unique performance of e-readers. In fact, e-readers are cheap, easy to read, and have a good reading effect even in the sun, and can last one or two months after a charge. This means that even if you have a more expensive tablet, buying an e-reader is a good choice. Another is that e-readers can "force" readers to concentrate on reading, unlike tablets, which provide distracting features and applications.

And e-readers have no threat of passive delisting because they are different from televisions or other electronic products-the latter's suppliers must constantly develop and update better technologies to improve profitability. But E-reader providers such as Amazon and barnes&noble do not expect to make money on hardware, and their for-profit means are selling e-books on devices. So even if the cost of e-readers approaches zero, it's still a profitable business. The difference is that e-readers sell more books than tablets, while tablets offer better entertainment and Internet experience. (It is worth mentioning that most e-readers have not tried to make a profit on hardware many years ago.) )

The question now, then, is whether E-readers will continue to play a huge role. It's a harder question to answer, but we don't think e-readers have lost interest. Over the past few years, we have seen the rise of touch e-readers and backlight readers, and the cost is low. In the meantime, future e-readers may be more innovative, such as loading flexible e-ink screens to improve portability.

E-readers are likely to go downhill like dedicated MP3 players, but they are far from extinct. Apple, for example, is still selling ipod classic--Although the product has long been predicted to retire and compete with the rest of the ipod product line. The ipod shuffle market has shrunk into a small box, and the ipod nano is turning to the smart watch field before it becomes a credit card sized music and video player. These devices have not gone away, but their core competencies have become better. Even e-readers are a better example. You could say that the iphone offers a much better music experience than the ipod nano (because the former can surf the internet), and e-readers can provide a more readable experience than tablets.

The Wall Street Journal shares these views to a large extent, but insists that the era of e-readers may end. But even at the peak of E-readers, the light of tablets can easily cover e-readers. According to IDC statistics, the 2011 Electronic reader shipments of 27.7 million, and tablet PC shipments up to 68.7 million units. While sales of tablet computers will continue to grow and the market for e-readers will shrink, the expansion of the tablet is also due to the shrinking of the laptop market.

So the reality is that e-readers have never had their own "times." They have always been, and will always be, the supporting role of the tablet computer. But they still exist.