It's interesting to read how any device that becomes commodity is "irrelevant". The most successful products that what becomes commodity...

As for e-reader's future, it is all too early to tell. What we know today as e-reader is an electronic paper tablet. Not more, not less. Today, it has limitations, such as lack of color and slow refresh of the page. But, color electronic paper is already available and it is pretty fast (perhaps faster than LCD) and therefore usable for displaying moving pictures, such as movies.

When fast color electronic paper reaches reasonable costs to produce we will see the merger of e-books and tablets. There will be no longer tablets with LCD, except el-cheapo for some time, until the produced screens are all used. Sort of what happened with the CRT monitors already.

What I wonder is why electronic paper is not used already in mobile phones. It could cut energy consumption in many of these devices enormously.