Study: E-Readers Must Be More Than Electronic Newspapers

Soon after the iPad was introduced, one of the earliest complaints was that readers don’t want apps and other accessories interfering with the words. Now comes a university study showing people need more than reading to fall in love with e-readers.

Indeed, the Univ. of Georgia study found younger consumers may prefer their phone to an e-reader. According to the research, young people view Amazon’s Kindle as “old” compared to smartphones with applications allowing them to do everything from listen to music to finding a restaurant, along with reading online.

At the other end of the spectrum, older readers said they missed the interaction they had with a physical newspaper, such as doing the daily crossword or reading the comics – features often missing from e-reader versions.

What both age groups agreed on was a lack of enthusiasm for the Kindle DX price: $489. Earlier this week Apple’s iPad was unveiled with a $499 price for a 16GB version.

A professor who conducted the research said the findings show e-readers need to be more than a different format for reading newspapers. “It should be seen as one of a constellation of services for the device including books, magazines, etc.,” Dean Krugman said in a statement.

In a hopeful sign that the iPad has an advantage in the e-reader market, the university study discovered color and a touch screen could sway readers to choose an e-reader. So far, Amazon’s Kindle is limited to a black-and-white screen and an array of buttons.

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[Via Wall Street Journal and Univ. of Georgia]

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Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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itskaye
I loooove to read books and I was just wondering… Does the iPad have the capability to highlight stuff on the digital book and then it automatically saves the highlighted quote to a separate er… document (with all the highlighted quotes from that book) which I could retrieve in a single click and then there’s the option of adding notes within the book? If none, well software developers, we need this. :-)
OMG. The possibilities for books and reading them and studying are endless. I’m beginning to reaaaaally warm up to the idea of the iPad. Still loathe the name though.
Liam
Prediction: Apple iPad may not “kill” the Kindle any time soon. But it’s true that the iPad is something that will certainly be more attractive to the younger generation (teenagers, college students, young adults) who will likely see the Kindle (relative comparison) as “their old uncle’s e-book reader”.
The young demographic (teens and young adults) from families with disposable income (“rich spoiled white kids”) will be among the earliest adopters of the iPad. But the 56-year old Baby Boomer will still stick to his Kindle.
Charli
if publishers really embrace the tech and don’t just do black words on a white screen, ebooks,emags etc could really take off.
imagine non fiction titles like cookbooks with instructional videos of various techniques or even being able to watch the recipe step by step. Travel books with short videos, language books with imbedded sound files.
fiction titles where you can read along with the audio book or flip back and forth.
newspaper and magazine publishers could do their own free standing versions with similar bits. many of the magazines that have folded or are on the verge could find new life online (since some of them still have their websites up) at lower production costs.
and so on.