I recently made the bold statement that I expect to see a billion eBook readers by the end of the next decade. This was based on no science whatsoever – it was simply an enthusiastic response to my receiving my first eBook reader in October this year when Amazon finally released an international version of their Kindle. Subsequent experience and the reaction of the many people who have got one has borne out my enthusiasm. This is going to be a massive disruption not only for the book publishers but also organisations such as libraries.

Ok, first of all I love the device (and this has nothing to do with my role as CTO or whatever plans we may or may not have here at Telstra).  I have one, I bought my daughter one for her birthday and I got one my wife one for Christmas (don’t tell her – she does not know it yet!).

Why do I like it?

1. Convenience: you can read it with one hand (you don’t have to hold the pages of the book open). You can read it anywhere you can read a book (because the screen is just like a book). In fact the screen is so realistic I sometimes find myself trying to turn imaginary pages.
2. Battery life: The secret of the Kindle (and any eBook reader) is the screen. If they use electronic ink, they don’t draw power unless you turn the page. You get about 2 weeks of battery life out of the thing.
3. Compact: 1500 books on one thin device.
4. Instant gratification: buy directly using the cellular network in a minute.
5. Amazon backend: books, billing, service.
6. Flexibility: Change the font size, or even have it do a very reasonable text to speech conversion if you want to listen to the book in the car or just because your eyes are tired. It turns the pages as it reads so you can pick up reading where you left off!
7. Documents: You can put PDF’s and Word documents on it (via an email address).

What are the downsides?

1. There will be a flood of eBooks on the market next year (e.g. Barnes & Noble are about to release one called the “Nook”, Sony and iRex already have them). They may be cheaper/better, etc – it is hard to tell. There are, however, 2 things to remember: (a) the screens are expensive so I don’t know how much downside there is in the price; (b) the Amazon set up is analogous to the iPhone integration with the Application Store, the end to end Amazon ecosystem is really good. Many articles are now appearing comparing eBook readers. See for example recent articles in the New York Times.
2. Amazon control: you cannot load ePub (the open standard) books onto the device. You can however have Amazon convert any Doc, PDF into a Kindle format.
3. Wireless charges: Because you are effectively roaming on an AT&T SIM card, you pay US$2 extra to download a book via the wireless network. You can however sideload for free via the Internet.
4. Geographic constraints: There are 350,000 books available for the Kindle in the US, but only 250,000 in Australia.
5. Lack of WiFi: Why is this a problem when you have a 3G service (and Australia has an incomparable one in the Next G^TM network – by the way, the Kindle works better on Next G^TM because it supports 3G at 850MHz but not 900MHz)? The answer lies in the way that libraries are likely to loan out eBooks – you will need to be in the library and connected to their WiFi network to borrow a book. This is still early days so this may change.