Reading On A Smartphone Is Good Enough?

A friend sent me a great article from the NY Times about ereading and whether people will be reading with their iPhones or Kindles.

I had some time to think about that since I ordered my first reader, Barnes and Noble's Nook.  I won't get it until early December.  I eagerly anticipate it's arrival and I can see myself get a lot of mileage out of it.

Nevertheless, the mobile device I carry with me, whether it is my G1 or iPhone, will almost certainly be with me 24/7.

The NYT article doesn't take sides but I decided to provide a little more meat on the subject.  It's an interesting one.  It's also quite important because our reading behaviors can ultimately decide what publishers and tech companies do.

Lots more at Onxo Mobile Society.

More at NY Times.

Mobile Reading

A while back, Steve Jobs said America has stopped reading when asked about ebooks and Kindle.  Well, it appears that is not quite so true given the number of ebook readers and standalone ebooks that are available for Apple's mobile platform.

And it's only a matter of time before they appear on Blackberry's app store and Android Marketplace.  Even with the dearth of apps for Android, there are already a couple of ebook and file readers.

So, I'm wondering when we will see e-ink like technology for regular mobile phones and mobile devices like Blackberries.  

With tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of mobile readers world-wide, be it on the iPhone or others, it makes sense that some sort of LED screen should be made available for mobile devices.  Because right now, as popular as the iPhone is for reading (some folks have argued the Apple's app store may have sold more books than Amazon has with Kindle), the iPhone and iPod Touch's screen was never made for ebook reading because due to power consumption.

I've taken my iPhone for reading at Starbucks for a couple of hours.  It works well and there more than enough juice just for that.  But it certainly will not last days like regular e-readers.  The Sony reader can last through 7500 pages turned.  Kindle can "last days" of use.  I doubt the iPhone will last a day of reading.

Perhaps with publishers who seem to embrace ebooks more and more, mobile device makers will realize the importance of reading to mobile warriors.  And with respects to Apple's head honcho, it appears that people still do read.  A lot.

Link:  Wired

Coming To A Cell Phone Near You: Books

I look after my fellow mobile warriors.  And when there's something cool, I want to share it with you.  The five you read who read Onxo posts on a daily basis knows that (three of you being imaginary).

So, here you go.  Simon And Schuster is bring about 500 books to your cell phone, even if you don't have a smartphone or mobile device like the iPhone or G1.  Now, I have a confession to make.  I like to read.  Wow, that felt good.  And I'm sure a lot of folks out there do as well.

Why is this significant?  I'll get to that.  First, this is what will be made available.  According to RCR Wireless, some best sellers like "The Secret", the popular Star Trek books, Buffy, and CSI will be among those that will be made available for download.

I tried it on the desktop browser (http://wap.global-reader.com) and the page told me access only from a mobile browser.  So, I tried it with my iPhone.  I took some screen shots to show what we're getting into.

I'll take a more in depth look at this on the Samsung Trace to see how well it works.  Oh, I should warn you that there are charges for the data download if you don't have a data plan.  So you might want to consider getting one before going forward with this.

I took some screen shots of what it looks like on the iPhone.  One of the books available for free is the Bible.  The other being a German-English dictionary, I picked the Bible.

So far, the books look like they cost $9.99 each.  For for folks who happen to be writers, Global-Reader has a link where you can send in for more information about publishing your best sellers.

With 3.3 billion phones with some sort of Internet access, this is a large untapped market for reading materials like books and magazines.  I think this is the right move to make.  The cost is not so prohibitive given the books are already available and may not even need to be formatted for small screens that exist on most phones.  After all, the Japanese have been using their mobile phones to read novels for years now.  According to the NY Times, five of ten top novels in Japan originated as novels on mobile phones.

The market is there.  People still like to read.  Make it accessible and affordable and millions of eye balls will read to find out if the Borg will ever beat Picard and the pesky crew of the USS Enterprise.

Source:  RCR Wireless

Note:  If you're an iPhone user, you have many options with apps like eReader and Stanza.  But if you're of the Web 2.0 kind of guy or gal, check out textonphone. They've got tons of free books on there.  Even books that should not be there because of copyrights.  But what do I know.

Can Apple Make America Read Again?

Can Apple Make America Read Again?  Maybe.  According to Forbes, Apple may have overtaken Kindle with respect to the number of folks using iPhones to read ebooks.  I encourage heading over to look at it a bit.

At the same time, we will examine a bit on who people are not reading ebooks as much.

I'll give you a clue?  "$".  There you go.

More at On Apple .