CES 2011: Tablet Crazy
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, touch-screen tablets took on the iPad. Are they the future of ereading? Feb 15, 2011
Ereaders are so last year. Tablets were the watchword at this year’s annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 6–9.
This year, the show set new records, with some 2700 companies from around the world exhibiting at the multiple exhibition halls and 30,000 attendees gawking at the products.
What did they see? There were still some 3-D televisions on display—a popular technology at last year’s gathering—and small crowds formed to watch people use Microsoft’s recently released Kinect game system. But tablets were definitely the star of the show, as companies large and small rolled out their iPad rivals. Last year, as LJ’s Josh Hadro reported (“In Front of (e)Readers,” LJ 2/15/10, p. 24-27), there were indications that other platforms were muscling in on ereaders’ turf. This year, tablets appear to be doing just that.
The ereader aftermath
The crush of ereaders at the 2010 CES was so overwhelming that Hadro wrote that the show had “more ereading devices than anyone knows what to do with.”
It was a prophetic statement. Several ereaders from last year’s show were nowhere to be seen in 2011—including the much-touted Plastic Logic Que proReader and the Skiff Reader—while others had a more scaled-back presence. If last year’s CES was a war for attention among ereader companies, this year’s was the aftermath, with the survivors hanging on at the far reaches of the exposition’s south hall, far from the bright lights of the central hall’s publicity-grabbing exhibits. One central-hall exhibitor, Copia, pushed its own dedicated ereaders at last year’s CES but not this time around (see "Ereader Survivors," below). As LJ noted last year, Copia’s hook is that it doesn’t require a specific platform—a strategy that could pay off as new platforms take hold. (The Blio ereader software is similarly device-agnostic.)
What happened to ereaders? Certainly, the popularity of Amazon’s Kindle—not exhibited at CES—helped thin the competition; it remains by far the best-selling dedicated ereader and in December became Amazon’s best-selling product ever. Amazon has long declined to provide Kindle sale figures, but they are certainly in the millions. Of course, Amazon’s ubiquity is not necessarily good news for libraries—its lending capability is extremely limited, and it doesn’t work with ebooks from e-lending services, such as that provided by OverDrive (which did exhibit at CES). Barnes & Noble’s Nook, another widespread dedicated ereader, also has e-lending constraints. The Sony Reader, by contrast, has better integrated library ebook lending; its partnership with OverDrive was first announced in 2009.
Now, of course, there’s the iPad factor at work, the elephant (not) in the room at CES. Apple’s multifunctional iPad has sold more than 7.5 million units since it was unveiled in April 2010, shortly after last year’s Las Vegas spectacle. Among other things, users can employ the iPad to read ebooks via free apps from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo, among others, as well as through Apple’s iBookstore. They can also use an OverDrive app to borrow ebooks and audiobooks from the library—an optimized app is forthcoming this year, OverDrive’s director of marketing, David Burleigh, told LJ —as well as a Bluefire app to borrow Adobe-based library ebooks. (See how to use the Bluefire app on the LJ Insider blog.)
The iPad effect
It’s hard to exaggerate the impact of the iPad at this year’s CES, which, for lack of a better term, was tablet-crazy. Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg, in a keynote at the show, joked that CES should have been called “TES” instead—for “Tablet Exhibition Show.”
Apple was notable for its absence, but companies large and small trotted out their own potential iPad competitors (see “Tablet Talk,” below). A few of the bigger playthings included Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook, set for a summer release; Motorola’s forthcoming Xoom; and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, released late last year. Both the PlayBook and Galaxy Tab come preinstalled with the Kobo ereader; the Galaxy Tab and Xoom, both Android devices, can also potentially use other ereader apps, including OverDrive’s.
There were plenty of other touch-screen devices out there, including those from, among others, Toshiba, Asus, and Acer (whose double-screened Iconia indicated that touch-screen mania had extended into the laptop realm). Panasonic showed off the tablet component of its Viera interactive-TV system—opening up the possibility of reading ebooks on your television (a kind of convergence hinted at during last year’s CES). But other smart-TV systems—Internet-connected, multifeatured TVs that often bring to mind a souped-up TiVo—have little interest in ebooks: reps LJ spoke with had no plans for TV-based ebook readers, instead concentrating on video and audio content. (It is TV, after all.)
Last year, LJ saw hints that ebooks would become more device-agnostic, moving beyond dedicated ereaders. If the plethora of iPad rivals this year is any indication, the future of ebooks will be on multifunctional touch-screens. Will a crush of patrons soon be lining up at the local library branch with shiny touch-screen devices, looking for content? That remains to be seen, but it pays to be prepared. Tablets may be a high-end, niche product now—not every patron has several hundred dollars to spare on cutting-edge gadgetry—but as Monique Sendze, associate director of information technology at Douglas County Libraries, CO, said at a recent tech panel at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting (see InfoTech), “We’re going to have to make sure that what we have works with what [patrons] have in their hands.”
Ereader survivors
LJ looked at a number of dedicated ereaders at last year’s CES. Several of them have vanished this time around, including Plastic Logic’s much-buzzed-about Que proReader. A few are still alive: the double-screened Entourage eDGe was on display, for example, as well as its smaller version, the Pocket eDGe. The open book–like interface remains intriguing, and it has an intuitive design that other single-screen ereaders lack, but its relatively limited functionality compared with many tablets may be a drawback for some.
Aluratek was still showing off its Libre ereaders, including a new color-screen version, with talks underway with Google, a rep said, to make Google eBookstore content available on the device. It’s clear, however, that the company doesn’t want to be left behind: it was also touting a new Android-based tablet computer, due to ship in April. One wonders if the Libre’s days are numbered.
Copia, which hawked its own ereaders as well as its social-networking and ebook-selling service at last year’s show, has scaled back its ereader plans. Copia’s rep told LJ this year that it potentially plans to offer hardware only in foreign markets, focusing instead on its service, which can be used on many platforms. Indeed, this lack of device dependency may be Copia’s strength: for example, LJ tried out its service this year on a new Samsung Galaxy Tab, one of many tablets set up at Copia’s exhibition booth.
Tablet talk
Among the many tablets at CES, a few stood out. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which uses an Android operating system, was officially released late last year as one of the first iPad competitors out of the gate. For those interested in ereading, it offers the wide range of ereader-app options available to Android users, including OverDrive’s app to allow library ebook and audiobook lending. Another highly promoted tablet, Motorola’s upcoming Xoom, is also Android-based, making it likely to work with the OverDrive app as well.
One more impressive tablet: Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook, which uses its own proprietary operating system, BlackBerry Tablet OS, and comes preinstalled with a Kobo ereader. Smaller and lighter than the iPad and other competitors, it can juggle multiple tasks seamlessly. It will be released in early 2011; if it catches on, it could be a contender—though library ebook lending options still have to be hashed out.
Book Saver—or copyright threat?
Although tablets were the big draw at CES, LJ spied one item that could have a seismic effect on the publishing and library worlds. It’s a product by ION Audio, a division of Numark, a DJ equipment
manufacturer—but it won’t be music to publishers’ ears.
Called the Book Saver, it can scan a print book and convert it to a PDF file in minutes. (PDFs can be read on nearly all dedicated ereaders, as well as the iPad, iPhone, and a host of other devices.) Unlike giant industrial book scanners such as those used for the Google Books project, this scanner fits on a tabletop. Though there’s no street date yet for the device, ION has said that it aims to sell it for around $150, with the first Book Savers scheduled to ship in May.
LJ visited ION’s CES booth—just a stone’s throw away from OverDrive’s—and asked an ION rep whether the company was concerned about potential copyright issues. He maintained that the Book Saver is only intended for personal use, which falls well within current copyright law. How such a scanner will be used in practice, however, remains to be seen.
THE COMPETITION Copia’s versatile service, running on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab (left), could be a model for success for ereader apps; Panasonic’s Viera interactive-TV system (below) put ereading in the mix; Acer’s Iconia laptop (right) tried to double its chances of success—with two touch screens
| Author Information |
| David Rapp is Associate Editor, Technology, LJ |
