2010 is going to see a lot of things, ideas and new devices and if we are lucky, we will get to see some market changing devices as well. There will be tablets and phones and other portable computers that will be extremely new and different. But if there’s one segment of the market that will see a meteoric rise — it is the print industry.
After watching Apple completely change the way digital music was consumed and then sitting on the side lines watching that same company completely redefine the mobile handset industry, several companies and startups have gone up in arms in order to seize the latest market that is ridiculously behind in terms of digitization. We are still buying books in their physical form whilst the CD is officially on the endangered species list and the vinyl is all but extinct. Sure there are revivalists, but they don’t count as normal users. So it is high time that the print industry stepped up and made books as easily available as music on iTunes.
And this is what Apple and the others are trying to do. Amazon has already started on this by making the Kindle and its companion platform — Whispernet. With the new Kindle International with free wireless connectivity (almost) all over the world, Amazon has made a very compelling product out of Kindle. But the competition is getting better and better everyday.
Starting from the inexpensive Interead Cool-r devices to the slightly pricy Sony readers — they are all vying to make the eBook and the readers catch up. But the industry has chosen its own bane by having to rely on the eInk screen. So even though the devices are selling, they are not selling as much as they could have.
To solve this very problem, several solutions have come up in the market. The best and the most promising so far has to be the Mirasol project. Getting inspiration from the wings of a butterfly, this Qualcomm supported project has been developing the next-gen display that will have the same power saving and visibility advantages as the eInk display and will also have RGB and faster frame rates. That means you can watch movies and full color documents/graphics/images on the next-gen Mirasol displays. eInk still has some time to go before it goes color and this technology is supposed to be in the market by this time next year.
Then is Pixel Qi’s hydbrid LCD-eInk screen that they have demoed just a few days ago. This screen technology blends the best of both worlds to give you a highly readable and power efficient hybrid LCD display. According to the company, the first major order has gone to a tablet making company. Everyone would think Apple at this point but then Pixel Qi also said that the company will be at CES 2010. It is highly unlikely that Apple will ever do that.
Coming to the actual content that will fill these devices, we have several stores opening up. Once there was only Amazon, then came the other big shot — Barnes and Noble with Sony nipping the heel. Both these companies have the spare capital to make something like this. But smaller companies like Foxit and others are also opening up stores for their own readers.
Some publishers are so very impressed by all the rumors of the Apple Tablet that they have actually made an app for the device in advance. I am of course talking about Condé Nast. This company is also part of a publishers collective who are planing to release electronic versions of their content to almost every handheld device with a screen attached. They are yet to act on this but they plan to.
All most of these plans are planning to launch some time in 2010. Thus, if there’s one industry that is getting a major shot in the arm — it has to be the print industry.
