Sony sees e-books overtaking traditional publishing in five years
by Darren Allan
Sony thinks that the e-book market will become larger than traditional print publishing inside of the next five years.
Or Steve Haber, the President of Sony’s Digital Reading division, believes this is the case anyway.
He reckons that books will go the same way as the music industry, with digitisation an inevitable process that will accelerate over the next few years.
Talking to The Telegraph, Haber explained that three years back, he said this process would take a decade.
He’s now revising that prediction down to five years, shaving a couple of years off his original guesstimate if you take the time passed between then and now into consideration.
The reason for this rethink is the more rapid spread of e-reader devices, such as the successful Amazon Kindle, and Sony’s Reader (of course); but also tablets like the iPad, which can be used to buy and read e-books.
Given the iPad’s initial success, with two million units shifted in just two months, Haber’s prediction might not be far off the mark.
Big publishing houses don’t think so, of course, pointing out that while the e-book market is certainly growing at a pace, it’s still relatively very small compared to print publishing.
Technology does have a way of accelerating exponentially, though…
Story link: Sony sees e-books overtaking traditional publishing in five years
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