There’s a lot of buzz these days around eReaders going mainstream -
- A few people think eReaders are already mainstream because people are talking about them on TV and putting them on Hots Gifts lists.
- A small set of people think 2009 will go down as the year eReaders went mainstream.
- Some people think 2010 will be the Year of the eReader.
- Forrester Research thinks Holiday Season 2010 is when eReaders go mainstream.
It’s time we figured out exactly how to define ‘mainstream’ and then made some educated guesses about when it’s going to happen.
A Definition for main-stream
Wikipedia includes this -
The original meaning of “mainstream” is “the principal current of a river”. Its use as a metaphorical reference to popular opinion or taste appeared at least as early as Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus in 1831 -
“those main currents of what we call Opinion”.
Using that definition we run into a problem -
- If only 40% of people read and even less read regularly, eReaders could never go mainstream.
- It means our mainstream would mean ‘mainstream amongst regular readers.
That’s not the only difficulty -
- Another problem is whether we are talking about replacing Books or replacing paper.
- If it’s replacing paper then we expand into newspapers and magazines and a lot more.
Let’s create two different benchmarks -
- Mainstream for when a significant proportion of readers start using eReaders.
- Mainstream for when a significant proportion of people who read on paper start using eReaders.
eReaders going Mainstream for reading Books
Lets say 40% of the US population reads and half of them read regularly.
That leaves us with 60 million regular readers.
For eReaders to be considered ‘mainstream’ at least a third of regular readers would have to be using one.
Which sets up a criteria and a time estimate -
- eReaders will be mainstream for reading books when there are 20 million of them in circulation.
- The prediction for that would be 2012 to 2013.
Perhaps we can stop talking about how eReaders are mainstream or how they are going to be mainstream in 2010.
Even in the best case we have 3 million or so eReaders in circulation. The user base has to expand 7 times before we can say eReaders are mainstream for reading books.
eReaders going mainstream and replacing Paper.
We have a much bigger figure here – at least 70% of the US population regularly reads and uses paper in some form or the other.
We’re talking 210 million people.
When a third of these are using eReaders we can say we have mainstream adoption of eReaders for reading – the replacement of paper so to speak.
That again sets up a threshold and a time estimate -
- eReaders will be mainstream for reading i.e. replacing paper when 70 million are in circulation.
- For that we are looking at 2015 and perhaps never.
Which brings us to an interesting thought.
What expectation do people have when they think mainstream?
What does mainstream mean to you?
In particular, when someone says – eReaders will be mainstream in 2012 what does that mean?
Do leave your thoughts.
Filed under: eBook Reader Devices Tagged: | sales estimates
