numbers (are you impressed yet)

[walkitout]

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/29/report_apple_slows_ipad_production_kindle_matches_shipments.html

Nice bits of rumors here.

Notably: Apple's iPad production is slowing; the assumption that's because of an upcoming product refresh. The numbers: iPad dropped from 2.1 million to 1.6 million for December. Kindle is at 1.5 million. Analyst "Kuo wrote, that "Kindle is going to mass market from niche market," and that "iPad cannibalization of Kindle is not obvious.""

Here's a little comparison from earlier in the month:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/12/08/bn.ships.over.500000.nook.colors.per.month/

Hey, we make 18K a day! A cool half mil a month! Go us!

Yup, go you.

Nice to see the e-reader has truly mainstreamed.

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

The biggest annoyance I am hearing on the street is that you can't get library books on Kindle. That's an oversimplification, as I think there are various workarounds, but basically people want to be able to drag the ePub version to the e-book and call it good. There was just a conversation on the [Neighborhood Name] Moms group where people were advising each other to get Nooks for this reason.

the workarounds suck

[walkitout]

And many of them involving breaking the DRM.

There's nothing stopping people from reading the library ebooks on a PC or Mac; there are plenty of free readers for that purpose, and the process associated with that would be one step less (if I understand it correctly) than getting it onto the Nook.

Be that as it may, I will note that if the primary argument for buying a Nook is to read library books, the Nook is unlikely to solve Barnes & Noble's problem(s).

I am wondering at what point Amazon starts supporting ePub. They've been pretty consistent about reactive support (they lend books now, on almost exactly the same terms as the Nook). Maybe they'll never support ePub. *shrug*

Re: the workarounds suck

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I don't think people want to read off a PC, though -- I look up things in books on PCs all the time, but I never, ever sit down and read a whole book on the PC (okay, apart from when I'm editing the manuscript version). I've tried and it's a pain.

But I would certainly say that one of the prime features I would look for on an e-reader is the ability to deal with library books easily, and if the Kindle hasn't got that, it's going to lose my interest pretty quickly.

Re: the workarounds suck

[walkitout]

If your goal is the ability to deal with library books "easily", all the e-readers are likely to lose your interest pretty quickly. The Nook can cope with the format used by most public libraries; however, the process of getting things onto the Nook drives even the fans nuts.

Mayberry's (<-- not the actual town name) library has a few kindles that they load books onto and then loan out. That at least solves all the technical problems.

Re: the workarounds suck

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I think that may have been worked out -- the lady I heard from on the [Neighborhood Names] Moms group said it was basically just drag and drop for her.

Re: the workarounds suck

[walkitout]

My understanding is you have to connect your reader to another computer using a USB cable; you can't do it via wifi. Is that correct?

Re: the workarounds suck

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I think that's correct -- people are pretty used to that process, having used digital cameras and so forth.

Re: the workarounds suck

[walkitout]

This is probably the right level of convenience for people who are already accustomed to navigating libraries: they know how to request, do ILL, check out the New Books shelves, game the local hold system, etc. It's probably not enough convenience to convince people who are equally read to buy as borrow to borrow instead of buy -- which seems very desirable in a variety of ways, now that I think about it.