The
Amazon Kindle leads the growing e-reader market, but numerous other
competitors are expected to enter the market. As the market
expands, book publishers are still trying to work through royalties,
e-book prices, and electronic rights related to shared materials.
An
estimated 2.8 million e-readers are in use in the United States --
excluding e-books read on PCs -- with 2009 e-book sales exploding
176.6 percent year-over-year.
E-books make up just 3 percent
of books sold, but that number also is expected to increase while
consumers become more familiar with e-readers and e-books.
Following
traditional print publishing, there are more women e-book readers at
the moment, while men favor magazines and newspapers. Both Sony
and Barnes & Noble discovered their products were being used more
by older users, but analysts are unsure if this is an industry-wide
statistic.
"We're not
finding the more-mature trend, and only a very slight tendency
for men to own e-readers more than women," Risa Becker, GfK MRI
VP of research operations, said earlier in the spring.
Although
GfK MRI didn't see a trend towards older consumers, it will be
interesting to see if the recent e-reader price cuts are able to
bring in a younger audience. Younger readers may also be
waiting for e-book prices to lower and stabilize before purchasing an
e-reader and e-books -- though Becker did say e-book users are likely
to be college-educated, make more than $100K per year, and are very
tech savvy.
