The State of the e-Reader Industry in 2015

e-Reader adoption on a worldwide scale is still fairly strong, despite the fact that e-book sales on trending downwards. In 2014 over 12 million dedicated e-ink devices were sold, which is a far cry from 20 million units in 2011.

The e-Reader industry is in a holding pattern, as many of the key players are not investing in new technologies and simply issuing small incremental updates on a yearly basis.

When it comes to the e-reader playing field, the sector as drastically diminished in the last few years. Sony, the most notable casualty was one of the first mainstream e-readers in the world and they operated one of the most successful digital bookstores. They had a good run, but abandoned selling digital content and scraped making new models because of Amazon being able to out price them. Smaller companies such as Cool-ER, Entourage, iRex, Spring Design, Kyobo have also went bottom up.

One of the main reason the e-reader playing field is so small is because there is no competition anymore when it comes to e-paper innovation. There was some really promising technology that emulated the best aspects of e-ink, able to be viewed in direct sunlight and had a longer battery life. The companies in question were Pixel QI, LG and Bridgestone, but they all abandoned their e-paper ambitions a few years ago due the perceived lack of demand. Meanwhile, against all odds Plastic Logic is still in business, teetering on the edge of oblivion.

The undisputed market leader when it comes to e-paper innovation is e Ink Holdings, whom is based in Taiwan. The company basically monopolizes the industry industry and counts Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo has their primary customers. Many smaller players such as Icarus, Onyx Boox and Pocketbook all deal with E-Ink in order to get advice on EPD displays and what type of processors they should go with, depending on their budgets. Lower end devices often have Texas Instruments processors, while higher end models employ Freescale.

A few months ago E Ink and Netronix officially joined forces to become an all in one shop for e-reader design and manufacturing. If a company wants to have an e-reader made, they deal with E Ink the entire journey, instead of being passed off. This might be good for the industry, in terms of being able to do everything in one place, but at the same time could be considered anti-competitive.

In 2015 the e-reader industry only has only two global players and a handful of regional ones. Amazon has the largest market share and 75% of all e-books sold in the US stem from the Kindle bookstore, while in the UK the figure is closer to 95%. When Amazon announces new e-readers it is normally a big event, with hundreds of journalists in attendance that are personally invited by Amazon. You can tell the Seattle company is trying to emulate Apple, by handpicking a few chosen ones and excluding all other media.

The second major global player has to be Kobo. The company has been on an expanding rampage, trying to dominate markets before Amazon can swoop in. One of their biggest secrets to their success is getting their devices in bookstores, where their prospective customers are. Michael Tamblyn – President & Chief Content Officer of Kobo told me on a few occasions that they focus on bookstores because their product seems more organic and wholesome, instead of being sold at a big box retailer, where technology is often cold and impersonal. 

What is an e-reader discussion without the Barnes and Noble Nook? They only sell e-readers, tablets and e-books in the United States and the UK.  The company used run a Windows 8 reading app all over Europe, but has since abandoned it.

Barnes and Noble has lost money on the Nook aspect for the last four years straight. In total, they have lost over 1.2 billion dollars on having too much inventory and selling too few units. They thought they could solve this problem by contracting out the tablet design to Samsung. This partnership is destined to fail because there is no Nook branding on the tablets and there is no compelling reason to buy one.

Barnes and Noble tablets used to be very distinctive and customers spoke with their wallets. The Nook Color, Nook Tablet, Nook HD and Nook HD+ were certainly not “me too” products when they first came out. The operating system ran a customized version of Android and the bookseller borrowed a page out of Amazons playbook by crafting a very unique hardware and software experience.  Many former customers have told me on many occasions that Nook has lost their edge due to shoddy hardware and a broken website that simply does not function.

There are only a handful of key regional players that have any sort of sales record and loyal customers.  One of the most well known is Tolino, which comprises of an alliance of telecom and tech companies that wanted to develop e-readers and open a digital bookstore to prevent Amazon from dominating the German market. Netherlands based Icarus has a fond place in geeks hearts because they were one of the first ones to develop open Android based e-readers, that allow you to install apps just like you would on a smartphone and tablet. Pocketbook tends to dominate Eastern Europe and Russia and Onyx Boox is primarily focused on the Chinese market.

Innovation? 

I have mentioned many times that the e-reader industry is stagnant and actively hindering innovation.  This is primarily because companies such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo are in the race to the bottom.   They want to sell products at the cheapest price possible and forgo critical features such as audio.  Just look at the recent Kindle Basic Touch and Kobo Touch 2.0, both of these devices have an e-Ink Pearl screen, which came out in 2010!

There are only a few innovative things happening in the e-reader industry that might give people a reason to upgrade their old devices. One thing I am very bullish on is the new Freescale IMX 7 dual core processor.  It was designed to improve upon existing technology and they worked in concert with e-Ink to power the next generation of e-paper.

Freescale told me during the product announcement that one of the prolific changes will be page refresh rates. The rate in which page turn speeds occur heavily depend upon the waveform that the e-Reader uses.  The update times can range between 125 mSec – 500 mSec.   By integrating the REGAL waveform support in hardware, Freescale are taking away any additional time that would be added due to Algorithm processing on the Cortex-A core, hence a savings of up to 150 mSec.

Solving the page turn program is a big step forward, but that’s not the only thing that is being remedied with this new processor. Ghosting will also be solved with this framework, which is a huge deal. Normally with e-readers you will have a full page refresh every six pages or in some cases every chapter. The reason for this, is the longer the display goes without a full page refresh text gradually starts super imposing itself.  I have never liked full page refreshes, as it breaks reading immersion.  Now, this will also be fixed, which means less full page refreshes because again, its now hardware based, instead of software.

Likely the largest innovation in the IMX product line is the support for hardware dithering.  This will allow e-reader companies that work with the Linux or Android platforms to be able to include animated content. This will include truly animated page turns, interactive menus and video. Freescale showed me somethings I can’t write about, but needless to say I saw fully streaming video on an e-reader and it looked awesome.

I am told that mass production on the new processors will begin in late October or November. This is likely why Amazon has not announced the Kindle Voyage 2 yet, nor Barnes and Noble Nook Glowlight 2.

The other major innovation has to do with Amazon and their purchase of Liquavista from Samsung.  Nobody really knows anything about the color e-paper yet, although Amazon has been on a hiring rampage over the course of the last year trying to develop it. This is one of the few things I have no timeline on, nor what they are cooking up. If you want to learn more about Liquavista I talked to the lead engineer on the program when it was owned by Samsung, check it out.

Wrap Up

You might think that e-reader sales are on a downward trend, and you are right. People are buying fewer devices now than they did in 2011, but there is a big reason for that. e-Readers are built with a singular purpose, to read digital books.  The hardware is built to last, and I know plenty of people who are rocking 6 year old readers and are still very happy with them.

If you have a first generation iPhone, good luck trying to get any modern app to work on it correctly, ditto if you have an old Samsung Galaxy S1. e-Readers only read books and don’t have a slew of complex apps. The reading experience on a first generation Kindle in 2007 is not very different from a top of the line Kindle Voyage.

The reason why e-reader sales are down is because people aren’t upgrading them with the same feverish pace as they do smartphones and tablets.  The old ones work great, and that’s OK!

In the mood for a “B” movie? Check out these films!

Not every film can be the Citizen Kane of its day. For every high-budget “A movie” that commands significant promotion and funding from its studio, there are piles of B movies that scratch and claw their way into existence without the benefit of things like “a budget” or “a script” in some cases. To compare them with A movies in terms of resources and immersiveness isn’t a fair proposition. Instead, discerning film fans are able to simply appreciate them for what they are.

But what does “best” mean when we’re talking about films often famous for their shoddy construction? It certainly doesn’t mean “best-made.” It also doesn’t mean “worst-made,” or else films like Manos: The Hands of Fate and The Beast of Yucca Flats would make prominent appearances. They’re not on this list because the meaning of “best” here is “most entertaining,” and I defy you to be entertained by Manos without its MST3k commentary or a pound of medical-grade marijuana. If these films are painful, they’re also equally fun.

Whenever possible, I tried to keep the list to more obscure titles. Although John Carpenter’s Halloween is a great example of a superbly made “B movie” in terms of budget, any film fan has most likely seen it already. Gathered here is a collection of some of the most entertainingly cheap and endearingly bad movies ever made.

100. The Giant Claw
Year: 1957
Director: Fred F. Sears

The Giant Claw is not the most captivating of the classic 1950s “giant monster running amok” movies, but it must be seen exclusively for the fact that it features the goofiest-looking movie monster of all time. This thing—this “antimatter space buzzard,” as it is eventually called—is so laughably stupid that it’s hard to believe they actually chose to feature it so extensively in the trailer rather than hiding it from sight. The poor actors weren’t even aware of how incredibly lame the monster would be until they saw the completed film, and by then it was too late. The Giant Claw stands as a classic example of 1950s drive-in cheese.

Hercules in New York
Year: 1970
Director: Arthur Allen Seidelman

Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger burst into the public consciousness with Conan the Barbarian and late night hosts mocked his stilted English? Well, that movie was made in 1982, after Arnold had been studying the language for more than a decade. Hercules in New York was his first feature film, credited as “Arnold Strong, Mr. Universe” because “Schwarzenegger” was too long. A massive 22-year-old with zero acting experience or charisma, he’s absolutely lost in this thing, casually strolling around New York and competing as a pro wrestler. His line delivery was so unintelligible he had to be completely dubbed, but evidence of the original can still be found. The words are so flat and vapid, he’s like a muscle-bound Lennie Small. It’s captivatingly bad because there’s so little evidence of the fun, campy actor he later became.

The Big Doll House
Year: 1971
Director: Jack Hill

There are certain genres you have to check off in a list like this, and the “women in prison” film is a classic sub-type of the larger 1970s exploitation genre. You know what you’re getting here: Nudity, abusive guards, a plethora of shower scenes and a daring escape. It’s pure sleaze all the way. Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heat is a bit better known, but The Big Doll House is more sincere and less satirical. It’s also one of the earliest appearances of blaxploitation legend, Pam Grier, who will recur on this list. Director Jack Hill clearly saw something in her (or at least liked seeing her naked), as he went on to direct several of Grier’s blaxploitation classics, such as Coffy and Foxy Brown. So really, this is one form of exploitation movie giving birth to another.

I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle
Year: 1990
Director: Dirk Campbell

If I gave you three guesses, do you think you could suss out the basic gist of this film? If you ventured “guy buys a motorcycle that is also a vampire,” then you would be correct. This trashy British horror-comedy is partially successful in its satire of American cheapo horror schlock in the style of Troma Entertainment, but it’s also got plenty of sincere badness of its own. It’s that rare sort of film that is amusing both in its intentional corniness and its unintentional badness, which is not a common combination. It’s just a gloomy, bizarre film, with scenes that include a dream sequence featuring a talking turd in the hero’s toilet. You probably don’t want to see that, but if you do, I won’t judge. It’s exactly what the trailer implies from the first lines: “Most good motorcycles run on gasoline. This is a bad motorcycle. It runs on blood.”

Iron Sky
Year: 2012
Director: Timo Vuorensola

This movie isn’t nearly as funny or clever as it thinks it is, but damn if it doesn’t earn a spot on the list just through strength of premise alone. In the annals of great premises for B movies, “Nazis from the dark side of the moon invading Earth” is an instant classic. It helps that the movie looks great for an entry in the straight-to-video segment, and the acting is serviceably campy. The political humor is a bit much and the Sarah Palin-esque American president quickly grows grating, but it’s no worse than you’d see in your average mockbuster from The Asylum, coupled with much higher production values. It’s a premise that could have been an all-time classic, but even as is, it’s tough not to enjoy Iron Sky as gleefully stupid entertainment.

 

Mazes and Monsters
Year: 1982
Director: Steven Hilliard Stern

File this one into the “before they were famous” category. Starring a 26-year-old Tom Hanks in his first feature film lead, six years before Big, this movie is the perfect encapsulation of the early 1980s D&D moral panic. Its “research” is hilariously poor, painting a D&D-style roleplaying game as a life-devouring descent into the depths of Satanism and mental illness. Hanks plays the resident psycho of the group, who falls so deeply into his cleric character that he takes to wandering the streets of New York, murdering hoboes he mistakes for orcs. It’s incredibly dour, tackling its subject matter in the same blind, contextless way that Reefer Madness handled pot 50 years earlier, and in the process proving how little we’ve learned. This is the kind of film you find in a pawn shop today in a hand-printed DVD case with a 40-year-old Tom Hanks’ face plastered on it. “You like Tom Hanks, right? Sure you do. You should buy this exciting movie starring Academy Award-winner Tom Hanks.”

Foodfight!
Year: 2012 (technically)
Director: Larry Kasanoff

The saga of Foodfight! is the story of its development, not its actual plot. Conceived from the very beginning as an experiment in product branding and consumerism, this animated adventure features dozens of household brands and mascots such as Mr. Clean as characters. Taking place in a supermarket for good brand access, it stars the voices of Charlie Sheen as talking dog/super spy Dex Dogtective and Hilary Duff as “Sunshine Goodness,” his cat-faced love interest. Also attached to this turd: Eva Longoria, Christopher Lloyd, Jerry Stiller and Chris Kattan, among others. The reason you’ve probably never heard of it is because it was originally intended for release all the way back in 2003, before the hard drives containing all the animation were stolen. The near-complete film had to be restarted all over again, the animation style was changed and extreme cost-saving measures were brought in. The result is absolutely the most nightmarishly bad-looking film ever made for a budget of $45 million. The entire time you’re watching this feature-length commercial, you’ll simply be wondering where all that money could possibly have gone.

Prophecy
Year: 1979
Director: John Frankenheimer

I have no idea why this film was named Prophecy, except that “15-foot mutant bipedal bear” was sort of a clunky title. Regardless, that’s exactly what it’s about: A bear monster mutated by a combination of man’s hubris and some industrial-strength industrial waste. The movie wants to have a serious message about pollution and the rape of the natural world, but it’s impossible to get past how bizarre the monster looks. The highlight is one of the silliest death scenes ever, when a small kid in a banana-yellow sleeping bag gets swatted through the air by the bear, striking a rock and exploding into a rain of goose down. I can’t see how this could ever have drawn any reaction but laughter in a theater.

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
Year: 1977
Director: George Barry

Immortalized in an incredible stand-up routine from Patton Oswalt, this is one of those great, lost films that finally found its way onto DVD a few years ago and was embraced by bad movie lovers around the world. The plot couldn’t be more simple: There’s a bed, and it’s evil! It eats stuff! What kind of stuff? Well, the bed’s not picky, just about anything will do: Teens, criminals, buckets of fried chicken and a bottle of wine are all on the menu. At one point, the freaking DEATH BED even gets indigestion, but thankfully there’s a bottle of Pepto Bismol lying on it at the time. Admit it, that’s a far better sponsorship tie-in than anything in the Transformers series.

King Kong Lives
Year: 1986
Director: John Guillermin

Until Peter Jackson’s passable remake, American King Kong movies were a little bit like the Jaws series, growing progressively cheaper, uglier and more ridiculous with every installment. This ill-fated 1986 effort picks up where the better-known 1976 remake left off, with Kong having seemingly plummeted to his death off the World Trade Centers. But hey, turns out he’s fine! And not only is he fine, but scientists have located a female giant ape of his species for a necessary blood transfusion. They soon break out and go on the lam, pursued by the military. That might sound exciting, but this film is primarily amusing for how badly it butchers the legacy of one of screendom’s most iconic characters. The special effects are beyond awful, somehow managing to look less dynamic than the 1933 original. Even the Japanese portrayals of Kong fighting monsters like Godzilla manage to have more dignity than this piece of garbage.

Sharknado
Year: 2013
Director: Anthony C. Ferrante

Most films from cheapo-cinema mavens The Asylum fall well short of “fun bad” and into the unfortunate realm of “bad bad,” but Sharknado is one of the rare few to rise above. Unlike so many other creature features from the same studio, it’s not stingy in its premise. It promises sharks propelled by tornados, delivers on that promise in the very first shot of the film, and then keeps on delivering. It’s eminently more watchable than just about any other Asylum film, which is a large part of what made it such a phenomenon when it premiered on Syfy in the summer of 2013. This July, it will even be graced with a live Rifftrax treatment when the former MST3k stars riff the film in theaters nationwide.