I think you're making the author's point. They cost the same 10+ years ago. They should be cheaper. And $100 is not chump change - but depends on where you live. Three day's salary for me (grad student)
I think we've passed the era of most new electronic devices constantly coming down in price due to time passing. They were all already mass produced commodities with competition at each step of the chain 10 years ago.
On whether $100 is incredibly cheap/"chump change": It really is incredibly cheap, especially for a new electronic device you can use for thousands of hours over 9 years. That's not the same as a claim it's an easy expense for every person, if we become bound by that definition of cheap then there is no such price which everyone can easily afford and we lose the distinction. On that note, I often wonder if it's cheaper for libraries to just rent out ereaders than manage more physical book storage and exchange. I know my local library already does rentals but I'm not sure of the economics.
Once the market is saturated, you can't rely on selling more devices, even at lower prices. Companies have to turn to extracting more money from existing customers, like subscriptions and services.
eBooks are expensive for libraries. Publishers are asshats and charge considerably more for eBook licences that expire after X uses or Y time, whichever comes first.
I'm curious how much you think an e-reader should cost?
Let's say the BOM for a bargain-bin e-reader is ~$65: e-ink display (~$25), mainboard (~$15), touchscreen and/or buttons (~$7), radios (~$3), battery (~$3), case (~$3), assembly (~$6), packaging (~$3). Forget about a charging cable. Then you've got to iron out the drivers and software, provide support, handle returns (which will be higher if you cheap out on materials) and turn a profit (assuming you're not Amazon). Let's say you charge ~1.5x BOM, now your product is ~$98.
Maybe you "borrow" your software and hardware designs from a competitor. Maybe you're willing to continuously change your company name so you can purchase low-quality parts without having to accept returns. Maybe you ask suppliers for a discount because you just know you're going to have enormous economies of scale and you're somehow more convincing than every other company (that isn't Amazon) asking for the same discount.
You do all of the above so you can sell your new e-reader for the insanely low price of $80. Will you move enough units for all that to be worth it? Are there really that many customers who would buy your $80 no-name e-reader instead of a second-hand Kindle?
6 inch color eink 24$ on alibaba, esp32 c3 cpu 3$ (incl wifi, ble, usbc) case 1$ probably. Assembly in china
3$ (done that), packaging temu style, transport temu style, touch layer I don't know.
BOM for a color eink about 35$ all together for a mass produced quantity of one, delivered anywhere (until tariffs).
Assumed quantity of customers, millions? Its so cheap that governments could give it out to schools, one eink ebook per child, cheaper than one year's worth of school books anyway.
Giving E-ink Corporation most of the profit via that 25$ screen is too much risk to make back on users who actually sign up to your store and buy books vs ones that put the gift in the closet, clearance models, losing to a more popular store, etc.
> too much risk to make back on users who actually sign up to your store and buy books vs ones that put the gift in the closet, clearance models, losing to a more popular store
I definitely agree that selling hardware at cost (or at a loss) in the hopes of turning a profit off of content sales is an extremely risky strategy. Many companies try that approach, few succeed.
But if you price it like a typical consumer product and sell it for ~1.5 * BOM (i.e. ~$50 retail price on $35 BOM) then you don't need anyone to buy books because you can survive off the profit from the hardware alone. And because I believe that a $50 ereader would sell well, I don't know why they are not more common if it really is possible to build and assemble a mass-market ereader with a $35 BOM as the prior poster claimed.
that just pushes the question back a step - why is the BOM not decreasing (in real terms) over time as the components get easier and more efficient to produce?
Well the pricest component is the screen, and that's under patent.
I think rising consumer expectations soak up a lot of that -- you could make the main board and other components a third the price if you're satisfied with mid-2000s specs e.g. 200MB storage, slow page turns, bundled radios, no touchscreen, no PDF support, etc.
At some point the raw materials cost (which generally aren't getting much cheaper) becomes a major factor and that's harder to cut without a new approach.
Eink screen aside, it may be that we're just nearing the limits with current manufacturing approaches and that the next leap requires a wildly different approach.
I bought a Kobo Glo HD for €129 in 2016. This would be €168 today.
A comparable entry-level model (Kobo Clara BW) today is €149 - 12% cheaper. It's also now waterproof and does bluetooth audio.
It's a niche product that doesn't really benefit much from economies of scale (think eInk displays of that size). I don't think anyone is getting ripped off here.
During that 10 years, inflation happened. Covid supply chain issues happened. Now, tariff uncertainty is happening. At the same time, the screen resolution of these devices has increased, the refresh rates have gotten faster, etc. Yes, even a "plain black and white" e-ink screen has slowly had tech improvements. So really, the price staying the same or going up a little is pretty expected. Most also have more other features now than 10 years ago.
Hum... I haven't checked on the last 3 or so years. But last time I was out to buy one, I couldn't find anything with a screen as good as the one I brought 5 years earlier. And most had severe software constraints.
And I've never seen anything on the market that even competes with my first reader that I brought around 2010.
Those things seem to be getting constantly more expensive, with the "cheapest price" being maintained by launching smaller models. All while constantly getting lower contrasts and less oriented towards offline usage.
What 2010 reader did you have? The $140 6" Kobo Clara BW for example is far far better than original $150 6" Kobo of 2010. Screen is much sharper and higher contrast, supports touch, it's way faster, has WiFi, front light, software does more, 16 times the storage. Only thing it lost is SD card support and the shitty dpad and I guess Blackberry integration.
Kindle is a similar story, although some value the physical keyboard and 3G.
And what smaller models? Most eReaders have been 6" since the days of the Sony Librie. Recently we have had explosion of larger readers too.
Now granted, the color models don't have the best contrast, but I'm pretty sure a modern Carta 1300 BW reader will be superior to your what 8 year old Carta HD reader, even with extra layers.
I had an Irex. The company went out of business a few years later. It had an 11" screen, very high contrast, supported note-taking over any kind of content, and had a nice modules API.
> Most eReaders have been 6" since the days of the Sony Librie.
7" readers were common when I brought my current one, but nowadays there are only 6" ones out there. A bit before I brought mine, there existed 8" ones, and Amazon launched an interesting A4 sized one.
You had a very niche device at the time that was far from the typical reader of 2010.
7 and 8" inch devices very much still exist. Kobo has the 7" Libra Colour and the 8" Sage. Amazon also moved the popular Paperwhite line from a 6" device to 7". Pocketbook has 7 and 8" readers. 7" only got MORE common if anything. Six inches was the most common eInk size for a long time.
You can still get big format devices with notetaking. Now the big brands like Amazon and Kobo have them in addition to smaller players like Boox or Meebook.
That's very much bigger than a book, so I think that's probably why it's harder to replace.
There are still large format paper devices. Kobo Elipsa 2E for $350, Remarkable 2 for a touch more, etc etc. They're not sold as ebook readers, but you can read books on them fine.
For many of us in the USA $100 is the price of a meal for 2, no alcohol, at a good but not expensive "fine dining" type restaurant. The e-reader seems like a total steal in that context. (which of course doesn't mean that the pricing of things isn't psychotic)
Can you give an example of a restaurant you have in mind? I thought I lived in a HCOL area, but your number seems off by nearly a factor of 2 to me. Plus, considering how infrequently many people eat out at all, I'm not so convinced that this specific argument is a good one.
Its ~50 to eat at any sit down restaurant for two adults in Central Louisiana; compare to 20 years ago where I was feeding a family of four for $40 in southern california.
The inflation is staggering.
Anyone else remember the $6 Burger from Carl's? It didn't cost $6 at first, it cost like $3, and was aimed at "expensive restaurant burgers" They discontinued the Burger when tbe Burger itself cost $6 a LA carte.
I'm thinking sit down waited upon dinner for two, "second/third tier cities" in Northeast USA mostly - In 2025 you might see $30/head "restaurant week prix fixe" but those places are usually closer to $50/head if there's anything additional to an entree
And yes, we have kind of a restaurant death spiral because it is expensive to eat out.
Inflation is calculated on a basket of consumer goods including electronic items. So, you can't just explain away prices by hand-waving "because inflation" when they define inflation themselves.
