News Report #5

Motoko Rich and Brad Stone, The New York Times Online

11.17.09

"Cellphone Apps Challenge the Rise of E-Readers"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/technology/18reader.html

Alright so eBooks will probably be dominating consumers for the holidays -right? Wrong. People are discovering that their smartphones already have the potential to do what any Kindle can. Why the inconvenience of reading off of a cellphone screen as opposed to the larger eBook one? Because by doing so, they will save $250 to $350. For the last eight months, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other, smaller companies have been releasing this book-reading software for iPhones and smartphones. In fact, 84 million Americans already have smartphones that can run these applications. And that's just phones. Apple has sold more than 50 million iPod Touches that also run e-book software. But, of course, Apple itself doesn’t see iPhones or iPods as the primary reading device they can profit from. Next year they plan to introduce a tablet computer — some device bigger than a phone (smaller than a Kindle?) “The iPod Touch is always at hand,” said eBook app user Shannon Stacey. “It’s my calendar, it’s my everything, so my books are always with me.” Interestingly enough Stacey also owns a Sony Reader, and claims she has bought twice as many e-books for her iPod Touch as for her Sony. Amazon is currently working on e-reading software for the BlackBerry and for Macintosh computers and last week introduced the said software for Windows users. But that's not it: publishers are now developing new forms of books especially for "smartphone readers," not eBook readers. Musician Nick Cave recently wrote his second novel, for which he worked with his publisher and a multimedia company to develop an app for the iPhone that incorporates the text but also videos, music (composed by himself) and audio of the author reading the book.

Okay, so I've never heard of this before, and though in light of recent events, this shouldn't surprise me - but it kind of does. This is sort of ridiculous. Yeah, I see it being convenient knowing that I could have the current novel I'm reading in my pocket, on the small device that I carry around with me everywhere anyway. Yeah, it's convenient not to have to spend the $250-$350 for a Kindle, but it's not a Kindle. The one business lady in the article says she uses her iPhone to read romance novels on her coffee or lunch break, and I get that -- but I really don't see how into a book you can get when you're reading it off of your cellphone. At least the eBook readers are designed for reading. Phones are phones. And all the apps are fun, but I've never used one that is that engaging, nor have I ever seen somebody use a smartphone app for longer than 30 seconds. This may just be me, but when I find the time to read for pleasure, I usually remove myself away from my phone and other distracting technologies so I can relax and get into the book. (Lately I've been doing it by the fireplace with some hot cocoa. TMI?) I can see where all the big companies are making profit off this, but like everything else with this whole digital libraries vs. actual hard-copies of books, I don't know where this is headed...