E-Book Readers Market Might Not Surge Because of Pricing

While Gartner thinks that 2010 will see a dramatic surge of the e-reader market, certain market analysts believe that the market won't see any type of quick growth unless the actual product prices drop to around $100 (£61/€67). However, those same analysts believe that such a price cut is unlikely because, at least currently, there is no competition between the manufacturers of such devices, namely Sony, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, to name a few.

This is probably due to the fact that e-readers still represent only a very small portion of the IT market itself, meaning that manufacturers and distributors do not get a notable part of their revenues out of selling e-book readers. As such, there is no true cause for truly heated competition between e-reader sellers.

So far, the general impression has been that 2010 will be a watershed year for e-book readers and will lead to a true mania during next year's holiday season. Even if this will still happen, it probably won't occur because of price cuts. Scott Liu, chairman of electrophoretic display (EPD) maker Prime View International (PVI), said that there was hardly any need for price reductions in this area because the market had only just begun to grow and there was no cause for competitiveness when still at this stage. He also added that PVI had not offered new clients price reductions for EPD panels, thus far at least.

This conclusion comes as a follow-up to the large amount of pre-orders received by e-reader vendors, demand that, due to being so high, actually caused Sony and Barnes and Noble difficulties meeting the planned release dates. Both were forced to admit that they could not cope with the received orders and that they couldn't provide all the requested e-reader copies in time for the holidays. Perhaps the fact that such products are already selling so well, despite their prices, is one of the factors behind the reluctance to reduce product costs.

In the end, prices may remain around what they currently are, specifically between $200-$500.