Worldwide shipments of dedicated ebook readers such as the E-Ink Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook will fall by 36 percent to 14.9 million units this year, and plummet to just 7.1 million units by 2016.
That’s the word this morning from industry researcher IHS, which blames the rise of multipurpose tablets such as Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Apple’s iPad.
Multi-function gadgets are winning out on single-function gadgets, with the result that the meteoric success of dedicated eReaders is going to be swiftly followed by a meteoric plunge to oblivion.
IHS says makers of ebook readers will likely continue to drop in price, which will prolong the life of the market, but “the devices on the whole will not regain the popularity they once had.”
Unless, of course, they make them free.
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