The eBook Play

Happy New Year! Wishing you all a fantastic happy new year. May good fortune shine it's light on you.

The future is now. Finally we're starting to get serious about digitizing text books. But don't think you'll save hundreds annually by getting all your college text books free throught Bit Torrents. Or am I wrong? Have you already figured out how to get the most current digital versions or just the old versions? Either way I'd image there are problems utilizing them. Students who like digital everything, say they still prefer the printed book at this point. So, it looks like there is lots of product, price and place details to work out. Nothing new, that was true with the cellphone, mp3 players and laptops too.

You know the management teams of printed textbooks don't want to lose their cash cows. You know the thousands of university college bookstores don't want to lose their on campus monopolies'. Each will want a cut of the pie.

Still, you guessed correct...Amazon's Kindle has companies like Sony and Apple scrambling to create a similiar product to sell to you. Early adapters always pay preme prices for the newest must have gadget. These things will are selling for as much as a new mid-level budget PC's or high end notebooks. How many gadgets can we carry at one time? Can Kindle's do text books too? Not at tech issue. It's your basic open source system vs closed code system issues.



On the day after Christmas, Amazon said the Kindle was the most-purchased gift in its history and sales of its electronic books surpassed physical book sales on the holiday itself. Amazon Kindle is a software and hardware platform developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 for rendering and displaying e-books and other digital media

Now Coursesmart, a joint venture of five textbook publishers, shows how students might use tablet-based textbooks. It is based on their own renderings, not specific applications being developed with Apple. Yes, I said Apple. No suprize Steve Jobs is returning to his special niche with Schools. In the 80's it was a wedding business strategy to give the schools Apple computer at large discounted prices. A loss leader, to capture their hearts and mind for future sales. But by the late 90's many parents wanted their kids to be learning on PC's for the business world which helped Dell and Gateway grow within the school system. And what about Dell? Surely, after watching the Kindle success explode they have been working on a Kindle knock-off? Right?



Now at this point in the game is there an investment play? Clearly in 2009 the play most related to this subject was Amazon and Apple. No Apple's not even announced a Kindle killer. But most Apple investors are holding onto thinking this stock is going higher based upon iPhone China sales alone. At these levels, I can't own either stock but the mighty Jim Cramer says don't sell, he perdicts both will go higher. No question American consumers are hooked on using Amazon and Apple products has become an American status symbol.

Can we see people buying two ebook readers? One for Standard Print Books and one for School Text Books? Gadget lovers yes, but the vast major of budget minded people will want to find just one device that can due multiply funtions. In 2005 the concept of a tablet laptops was gaining momentum -it faded fast. By 2007 the selection, power and price points on laptops under $1,000 was motivating record levels of buyers. In 2009 regardless of the greatest American recession notebooks where flying off the shelf's at $399 price points.

Given there's nothing extremely unique behind any of these technologies, can anyone see one primary light-weight high-powered device that does it all. Assuming we'll always want a very small mobile phone, I'm referring to the possibility of the Tablet PC/Laptop returning to the lime-light. I'm wondering if a Tablet PC as light as Apple Laptop Air and with a phone like slide out or flip up key board can do it all? What do you think? Does anyone have any micro-cap plays related to the future of ebooks?