OpenReader in 2005?
Time is marching on, the Times of London predicts 2005 will be the year when consumer electronics firms start seriously battling over themarket for ebook reading hardware. Now it will take a few years for that market to develop but all the infrastructure is being developed now, since most of the current dedicated ebook readers are being assembled from old parts found in the parts bin, leftover from the ebook crash of 2000 - 2001. What the electronics manufacturers are doing now is finally starting to design new readers with new technology. That is going to make the need for the OpenReader ebook format standard very important. Given the design and manufacturing lead times involved, not to mention the software lead times, OpenReader needs to have a product released in 2005 in order for manufacturers to adopt it. My fear is that if there is no OpenReader spec published manufacturers will opt to go with either their own proprietary ebook format or some other off the shelf, but still proprietary format. They need to have that Open Reader alternative available.
There is another trend that relates: 2005 is going to be the Year of the SmartPhone, (Source: Threadwatch.org) and I think this is a safe prediction. This will mean a huge amount of people will be carrying around mobile phones which will be capable of reading ebooks. This should reinforce sales of ebooks, but it is also going to make the need for a standardized format such as Open Reader even more important.
Other sources: eBooks On Web Index
2 Comments:
Do you really think OpenReader can be better than Mobipocket Reader ?
Yes actually I do. I like Mobipocket and I use it for most of my non-encrypted book reading on my PDA. (For encrypted (DRM) ebooks I use either my eBookwise 1150 or eReader on my PDA.)
Mobipocket remains a proprietary format, while OpenReader will be non-proprietary. The advantages to this are:
1. No royalties for publication in that format.
2. Third parties can make software and/or hardware for OpenReader without license or royalties. - This will lead to greater innovation and cross platform abilities.
3. Archival value, a non-proprietary format has a better chance of still being around and readable in the future. Private corporations come and go. (eg. try getting any modern computer to read a Wordstar format file today. Yet ASCII text is still readable.)
Post a Comment
<< Home