this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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The market works the other way. You want a lot of adoption at the mobile level which will drive development faster and then those developments can be scaled up.
The iPad exists, in part, because of the iPhones specifically and the development of touch screen mobile technology in general.
Bigger e-readers have been around longer and are popular now, particularly the 7" Kindle size. I find it too small but that's partly because I like to read full page PDF documents rather than just epubs. As it is, I use my laptop and it's not too bad.
Touch screens aren't a particular technological challenge nowadays. It's mostly about the actual displays and the power that they draw, and the PHB's making product decisions.
Only a little over 10% of Americans have an e-reader and their popularity is declining.
E-ink screens will continue to be niche technology without the advantages of increased development by competing manufacturers.
Way back in the early 2000s cellphones varied greatly. All the designs and models that were available and all pretty distinctive. Today the market is almost exclusively touch screen smart phones; evolutions of the early designs by Apple, HTC, Samsung etc.
Three years later the first iPad was released and that same year Samsung released the Galaxy Tab.
Widespread adoption and competition drives development.
Meh there is some kind of artificial scarcity making e-ink screens expensive as far as I can tell, especially big ones. If e-readers are declining it's because people are using their phones instead, just like small digital cameras have declined. Small e-readers just don't have much to offer compared to phones.
I don't know how the market in tablets is doing. But there are no affordable large e-readers (13" and up) as far as I can tell. I can't predict whether such a thing would get traction if it existed, but I'd be interested.
lol
That’s called “lack of demand”