Los lectores de ebooks no son solo para geeks (en UK)

Vía booktwo.org he dado con un interesante artículo, electronic readers: not just for techies. Empieza fuerte:

Bookworms who enjoy browsing through dusty tomes in second-hand shops might balk at them, but electronic readers are fast becoming the must-have gadget for literature lovers.

Si de lo que se trata es de leer y no de encelarse con fetichismos de objetos, creo que describe con cierta claridad el panorama americano de hoy y (esperemos) el español de mañana. Pese a que Jobs diga que los lectores de ebooks no tienen importancia, porque la gente ya no lee.

En cualquier caso, lo realmente interesante es, como dicen en booktwo, cómo los mass media van por detrás (o simulan que van por detrás), a la hora de hablar de los ebooks y sus lectores. Véase esta perla:

2009 could prove to be the year that electronic books, or e-books, cross over from being the sole preserve of techies to a must-have for everyone. Currently, the Sony Reader leads the pack. When the product launched through Waterstone's stores in September, it quickly sold out, and the devices are flying off shelves ahead of Christmas. But there is some tough competition on the horizon. Amazon is finally set to launch its Kindle e-book, which allows users the opportunity to download hundreds of books wirelessly from the internet on the move, in the UK next year. Like the Reader, its reputation is formidable, with almost 400,000 of the product already sold in the US.

Hay que decir que la explicación es un poco simplista, porque deja a un lado el resto de los lectores o reduce la presencia del Iliad a un problema de precio. Como muchos otros, cae en la reducción del problema al lector, en vez de preocuparse por el problema real, la plataforma completa que incluya el sistema de distribución de contenidos.

Y tras ese repaso rápido al panorama, viene lo interesante:

Needless, to say, Sony is in a buoyant mood. It is No 1 in the marketplace – with a 90 per cent share of the market – and hopes to stay there even after Kindle is launched. "We are in restraint at the moment; namely, we don't have as much stock as we need to supply everywhere we would like," says Wes Dearing, the Reader's UK product manager. "At the moment we are conducting research to gain an insight into who is actually buying it. While there would definitely be a percentage of gadget aficionados getting hold of them, there are also those who love books buying it, and I would argue that we are already reaching the mass market. But to pull in as many people as we can, our product strategy will now be to open up our range of colours, and implementing new technology to get people interested. A lot is also driven by the content available."

Me parece un poco excesivo hablar de que se esté cerca de superar el nivel de early adopters, pero sí me parece aceptable pensar en que los amantes de los libros, y no sólo algunos geeks, estén entrando en los ebooks.

Sencillamente, los lectores ebooks ofrecen demasiadas ventajas como para que se queden en un nicho raquítico durante mucho más tiempo