[LINK] ebook readers -- here they come!

[Anthony Hornby]

Android ~ linux. Sold millions of smartphones this year (outsold the
iphone's initial launch for example) when only a couple of handsets
are available (T-Mobile G1 aka HTC Dream being the only one available
until a few months ago). Is being ported to everything imaginable
right now and there will be at least another 6 or so handsets
available by the end of the year. Vendors & telcos backing this move
are big players like Google,  AT&T, T-Mobile, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson,
HTC - there are dozens of them <grin>.

Not many selling here yet but this will change as Australia eventually
catches up with mobile trends elsewhere.

Home ADSL routers and many other devices running embedded OS's - lots
running Linux & growing.

I would think the economics absolutely work when the commodity the
people building the devices want to sell has nothing to do with the
device operating system beyond the OS being a good fit to purpose. In
that market not having to licence something you can get for free and
develop cheaply as you will would seem to be a compelling argument.
The reader OS just needs to do the job as cheaply and simply as
possible - they are not going to care about it beyond that.

I think it is economics that would make the strongest case - why
wouldn't you use Linux if you get most of the codebase for free (these
are fairly simple devices after all) and you can cheaply add your
point-of-difference code on the top without having to pay licensing
fees to mega-corporations?


Regards Anthony


2009/8/31 Ivan Trundle <ivan at itrundle.com>:
>
> On 31/08/2009, at 5:23 PM, Kim Holburn wrote:
>
>> TomTom?  Works as consumers want it to work.  Easy to use.  Runs
>> linux.
>
> Funny that you mention TomTom, as I am developing an interface for a
> turn-by-turn app right now, with the intention of eliminating the
> deficiencies of the current iteration of TomTom hardware. I would not
> call TomTom software 'easy to use': and could go on at length as to why.
>
> Actually, TomTom appears to have fallen out of favour with many
> Americans: for a whole bunch of reasons.
>
> But this is not quite what I was referring to: e-book readers, GPS
> devices, etc - all offer niche products to niche markets. There is a
> wider market for devices that do more things, but well.
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