How painfully easy it is to get me started on eReaders

It was in the middle of adding a comment on a great post by Ed Oswald of the Technologizer, that I had realized I was writing I lengthy post.

There are a few hot-button tech topics out there for me. eReaders and eBooks are one of them.

To that end, Oswald notes that based on some research, eReaders need to be much cheaper in order to reach critical mass.

"While the Amazon Kindle and to some extent the Sony Reader have ignited the e-book industry, analysts say that the market will not be able to grow much further without a serious price drop. Forrester Research studied the problem, and found the “magic price” where consumers would start considering a purchase was around $150.

It gets worse though: the actual price that consumers want to pay is much lower, sitting at around $90. This is nowhere close to the current retail prices of e-bookreaders: Sony’s somewhat close to the magic number with it’s cheapest at $199, but Amazon’s way overpriced in consumer’s eyes at $299."

That apparently tripped the comment trigger for me. I guess it takes so little ;)

"I think if you factor in the popularity of the price point of the $99 8GB (older model) iPhone when the 3GS first launched this summer (real cost aside for a moment), I think you see some data that could support some critical mass. I think you’re right though, that removing the EV-DO card might be a way to get a cheaper model, perhaps with a higher priced one getting it.

For me the bigger barrier to entry is the cost of the eBooks themselves. Although I have found the Kindle App for iPhone to be a very doable and convenient way to read that fits a busy schedule, I am constantly running up against a price point that (paperbacks and older books) that is very close to what I could get at a borders and Barnes and Noble-who are doing some competitive pricing on their own. Plus how do I know that the ebooks I buy are going to be able to port over to other devices. Expensive and DRM’d to kingdom come? Hmmm…

eReaders I think have a very small window to themselves if we are in fact gearing up for a tablet boom in the coming months/years. If I can get a Kindle app on a tablet, that sports all the other applications that smartphones are sporting, who wants to wait around for a cheap, dumbed down eReader?

We are talking here about a battle for the backpack and the backpocket of people and we are getting to the point where people want to carry less around with them.

So to get back to your title, it’s time for a price drop RIGHT freakin’ now."

Alright, I'm coming down off the soapbox. It's just that the view is so great from up there.