E-book market to explode claim industry observers

A leading group of consultants has predicted over six million e-book readers will be sold in the United States during 2010.

The Boston-based Yankee Group also expects the market to grow to $2.5 billion by 2013.

Project Gutenberg, which was the first producer of free electronic books, took almost 40 years to develop a collection of 30,000 e-books. Amazon was able to offer Kindle users over 1 million in fewer than two years.

Yankee Group's Dmitriy Molchanov noted, 'Unlike the iPod, which hooked serious music buyers in addition to a raft of casual listeners, e-book reader adoption will be limited to heavy readers only, at least until prices come down.'

Predictions suggest the average price of e-book readers will fall by around 15% each year for the next five years.

Molchanov notes that the first manufacturer to build an under-$150 e-book reader focussing solely on reading rather than additional features stands to dominate the market.