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Is the Skiff Arriving Too Late to the eReader Party?
By Dave Peterson | January 12, 2010
My favorite eReader coming out of CES 2010 was the Skiff, a large format device aimed at the newspaper and magazine audience. The reader is big (the screen is 11.5 inches diagonally with a 1200 x 1600 pixel display), but quite thin (just over 1/4 inch). Its 17 9/16 ounces is a bit lighter than the smaller screened Kindle DX. It’s not small enough to put in your pocket, but it should be as easy to carry as a pad of letter-size paper. Best of all, the promotional images for the Skiff show it displaying a newspaper in the column layout arrangement with which we’re all familiar. It seems like a perfect device to bring newspaper readers into the eReader world. But it may be arriving a year too late.
I think 2010 is going to be the year eReaders (and our expectations of them) change substantially. As much as I hate the cliche, I think the tablets that are bound to come out this year, from Apple, HP, and others, will be “game changers”. Or maybe market fragmenters. Once a good color tablet is available, there will still be a few reasons for some people to prefer the kind of e-ink displays that are found on all the readers currently on the market. Monochrome e-ink readers will still have far better battery life than color displays, will be less likely to cause eye-strain, and may be less expensive. They will do a fine job of displaying text-only books and may start to actually duplicate the newspaper experience. These large format readers are impressive to see now, and would have made a very big splash had they come out last year. This year though, they’re going to be going up against full color tablets that will deliver a much broader eReading experience, and functionality beyond reading. The Skiff is not yet priced; the comparably sized Que is coming in two models priced at $649 and $799 (the more expensive adds 3G and doubles the storage). That is pushing into the range where we can expect to find tablets with a color screen and full media playback abilities.
Price may protect the lower cost eReaders like the Kindle and the nook, but the Skiff and the Que are likely to take a serious competitive beating from comparably priced devices that deliver a better experience and a broader range of capabilities. It may be that 2010 will go down as the year the tablets killed the dedicated eReaders.
Topics: CES, ereaders | No Comments »