The future of mobile e-content

Alexander Turcic · 11-25-2002, 06:06 PM

If someone asked me today about the future of mobile e-content, I would say that I am confident that in 10 years from today mobile e-content, including headline news, sport news, healthnews, etc, will be more important and more demanded than regular paper content. I know I am taking a somewhat extreme view of the near future here.

What is your opinion? Do you think I am just nuts? Tell me what you think and why you think so!

saw9000 · 11-25-2002, 11:38 PM

I genuinely think that e-content will grow in popularity.  It already has, and many people now read the newspaper online.  I don't recall the last time I actually sat down and read a series of newspaper articles on paper, but I read the new through both my PC and my PDA every day.  
It seems that as the use of handhelds grows, the use of mobile content will grow, as well.  The ability to have updates instantaneously for connected devices, instead of daily with newspapers, or only as often as one can get to a PC, will get many interested.  Granted, there are those who don't care about timely news, but not many people will shun it if it is available.  
Scott

drc54 · 11-27-2002, 06:16 AM

Firstly, I agree, getting and reading news on my M515 is the way to go. But for me, keeping up with the local, international (not to mention US) and my home country news, takes a lot of effort. At least, your creative solution   helps a great deal. I just need to automate the process a bit. From your last channel list, I simply click 10 or so channels, then convert them. I believe some are updated daily, others perhaps weekly or less.

For my local news (in Bahasa Indonesia), none seems to have a Palm friendly pages. I maybe wrong though   . So, the only I can get local news in my work location (Singapore), is thru the web.

The last category of news, and I admit, I'm a sucker for science and technology, are the popular science, national geography, scientific america, type of articles. Well, until the PDA evolves into one with foldable screens, it's going to be difficult to appreciate articles by just reading them on my M515.

So now back to the question. Is the future paperless news? I think it is, but I would not hold my breath it'll happen 10 years from now. I've been in the IT business for the last 20 years.

saw9000 · 11-27-2002, 01:01 PM

Reluctant though I am, I must agree with you that movement in the general direction of a paperless office has been slow.  In fact, it seems that instead of paper becoming less a part of the office environment, people are simply getting better and better printers and copiers to help them deal with it.  However, I also think that paper is going to beome less and less of an issue in real life.  What with all the e-wallet solutions out there today, it is only a matter of time until people figure out that paper is not necessary to make a transaction using a credit card.  The reason I hope for this to be the starting point is because this will likely provide the monetary stimulus and the critical mass necessary to drive lots of development.  
From a movement like electronic payment, I think paperless news will become more and more common.  Subscription services will be a bitter pill to swallow for some, but I would be willing to pay the same for an electronic subscription to my local newspaper as I would for a paper one, if only to avoid having all that paper to put in my recycle bin each week.  Loading the whole paper might be a space hog, but that's what memory cards are for.  Imagine, the whole newspaper, in an electronic, searchable, archivable format.  Now, that would be a history student's dream.  
Scott

Alexander Turcic · 11-28-2002, 06:29 AM

saw9000, I agree. Also, I think the current PDA devices are not mass-market ready yet. They are expensive, use a lot of a battery, and the LCD displays don't work very well in bright rooms or outside environments.

What I hope will be a breakthrough is E-Ink as an alternative to LCD. First working prototypes are already out and look very promising. First market products could debut within the next two years. ZDNet has some more info.

saw9000 · 11-28-2002, 09:00 PM

I think PDA's, as they stand, are ready for the mass market.  The question, in my mind, is whether or not the mass market is ready for them.  The devices have been refined a lot since the beginning.  Development has come from black and white, to monochrome, to color, and all the way to hi-res color.  There are corporate devices, entertainment devices, consumer devices, etc.  However, there are not enough people who know what can truly be done with such a device to make for a big market for PDA's.  There will simply have to be something to inform people without question how useful these devices can be.  From there, I think the sky is the limit.  
As for electronic ink, the idea sounds great.  Once it gets here, it will be interesting to see how it does at market.  However, I think it will have to be in color to compete with today's LCD devices.  
Scott

RockerChick · 05-26-2003, 09:23 AM

You all make interesting points, but there are people, like my parents (in their 60s) and my Sig Other (in his 30s) who PREFER paper. They all have PDAs (my hand-me-downs) but wouldn't part with reading the newspaper if their life depended on it.

saw9000 · 06-02-2003, 01:47 AM

I quite agree with you. In fact, I have noticed the same thing among my own family and friends. My girlfriend has pretty much converted and decided to start reading eBooks. My father is now using his wireless phone as his main PIM, and I'm really trying to get him into handhelds. The conversion seems to be working, albeit slowly. As for the rest of my friends and family, there are a few really tough cookies among them. My mother likes books enough to devote a room of the house to them. A friend of mine likes paper enough to be studying to become an archivist, so I don't hold out much hope for her.
In general, I think that some people will probably never want to convert to the benefits of electronic media. However, there are a lot of people who, given the chance, would gladly carry around ten or twenty novels and an encyclopedia in a device which fits in a shirt pocket. In fact, I think the market would be a lot bigger if more people knew that this were possible.
Scott

crh3f · 06-02-2003, 08:57 AM

Rocker, you're correct that there are people who won't part with paper. I'm in medical school, and all of our lecture notes and everything are available online, as powerpoints, etc. A great amount of my class actually goes and prints it all out, sacrificing color pics and quality for the feel of good old hardcopy.

However, even though they still hold on to this, people who have gone, or have moved towards, paperless are not looked at as unique...so, in my opinion, in 10 years, while there will still be a lot of holdouts, getting content on a PDA will be "a" norm, if not "the" norm.

brahamt · 06-06-2003, 08:27 AM

I have been a PDA users for the last 15 years and a Palm user for almost half that time. Unfortunately, as some will tell you, I am kind of evangelical about certain things that have truly changed my life (Palm PDA, Tivo, weekly lawn service, etc). As much as I demonstrate how superior the technology is to datebooks, planners, address books, etc, there is a set of people who prefer the paper. As a matter of fact, one of my old bosses, got a beautiful Palm Vx a few years back from her husband. She spent several days inputting all of her data, and never left her paper. She did end up printing out the address book to stick in her planner (it was cleaner).

The one thing I am sure of, is that there is a set of people (and they are not a trivial group) who will never move to paperless. I work in the Document Imaging industry, so even when they move to paperless it generates more paper. I once had a customer who moved all of their application process to a Document Image system. The process was completely paperless. I later discovered that at the end of the process they were printing every single document out for auditting!!!!

So eBooks, eNews, and all of this stuff will eventually replace paper, but not in the near term. If you would have invested in a paper company when the IBM PC was introduced, you'd be very wealthy.

TadW · 07-24-2003, 08:04 AM

According to this article, it is impossible for the Internet to replace a book. I think Jayasankaran is wrong here and he forgets to consider future technologies like E Ink's flippable pages. Personally I already prefer the ebook to the pbook.

DaNDeE · 10-30-2003, 07:53 AM

Hey, I just figured out that the most common readers like Mobypocket have been ported to symbian s60 smartphones, hence that not even the PDAnerds are able to take their library with them, now even those with a "stupid" mobile can do. Think this is worth a new threat in the Bookreaders section, istn't it?

I guess, this is step further in e-paper direction, but it will take ages, to get rid of a newspaper as such. For people on this forum it is normal to deal with the net and finding their propriate news, books, or what ever, but for the elder among us this is not common.

My father e.g. has his own library, which counts hundreds fo books - the whole house is stuffed with books. I showed him the ebooks on my PDA, but he was not interested. First he likes real books (no way to change this) and second he believes, that he is far to old, to learn how to handle a pda. I think, that this are the two main reasons, why paper will last for at least the next 30 years, until the "old", no-tech generation is gone and the handling of the whole e-paper subject has become daily business and easy as buying your newspaper today.

View Poll Results: The future of mobile e-content
downloading e-content live from the news kiosk (connected to the inet) will be just as normal as buying the paper news	26	61.90%
e-content will become more relevant, however, useful content will be available only to premium customers and thus not replace the standard paper newspaper	14	33.33%
e-content will be a niche as it is today, only interesting for some geeks like me, but not for the regular paper newspaper reader	2	4.76%
Voters: 42. You may not vote on this poll

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11-25-2002, 06:06 PM	#1
Alexander Turcic Fully Converged Posts: 18,171 Karma: 14021202 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Switzerland Device: Too many to count here.	If someone asked me today about the future of mobile e-content, I would say that I am confident that in 10 years from today mobile e-content, including headline news, sport news, healthnews, etc, will be more important and more demanded than regular paper content. I know I am taking a somewhat extreme view of the near future here. What is your opinion? Do you think I am just nuts? Tell me what you think and why you think so!

11-25-2002, 11:38 PM	#2
saw9000 Zealot Posts: 118 Karma: 4598 Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Baton Rouge	I genuinely think that e-content will grow in popularity.  It already has, and many people now read the newspaper online.  I don't recall the last time I actually sat down and read a series of newspaper articles on paper, but I read the new through both my PC and my PDA every day.   It seems that as the use of handhelds grows, the use of mobile content will grow, as well.  The ability to have updates instantaneously for connected devices, instead of daily with newspapers, or only as often as one can get to a PC, will get many interested.  Granted, there are those who don't care about timely news, but not many people will shun it if it is available.   Scott

11-27-2002, 06:16 AM	#3
drc54 Enthusiast Posts: 41 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Singapore Device: Palm m515, now TX	Firstly, I agree, getting and reading news on my M515 is the way to go. But for me, keeping up with the local, international (not to mention US) and my home country news, takes a lot of effort. At least, your creative solution   helps a great deal. I just need to automate the process a bit. From your last channel list, I simply click 10 or so channels, then convert them. I believe some are updated daily, others perhaps weekly or less. For my local news (in Bahasa Indonesia), none seems to have a Palm friendly pages. I maybe wrong though   . So, the only I can get local news in my work location (Singapore), is thru the web. The last category of news, and I admit, I'm a sucker for science and technology, are the popular science, national geography, scientific america, type of articles. Well, until the PDA evolves into one with foldable screens, it's going to be difficult to appreciate articles by just reading them on my M515. So now back to the question. Is the future paperless news? I think it is, but I would not hold my breath it'll happen 10 years from now. I've been in the IT business for the last 20 years.

11-27-2002, 01:01 PM	#4
saw9000 Zealot Posts: 118 Karma: 4598 Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Baton Rouge	Reluctant though I am, I must agree with you that movement in the general direction of a paperless office has been slow.  In fact, it seems that instead of paper becoming less a part of the office environment, people are simply getting better and better printers and copiers to help them deal with it.  However, I also think that paper is going to beome less and less of an issue in real life.  What with all the e-wallet solutions out there today, it is only a matter of time until people figure out that paper is not necessary to make a transaction using a credit card.  The reason I hope for this to be the starting point is because this will likely provide the monetary stimulus and the critical mass necessary to drive lots of development.   From a movement like electronic payment, I think paperless news will become more and more common.  Subscription services will be a bitter pill to swallow for some, but I would be willing to pay the same for an electronic subscription to my local newspaper as I would for a paper one, if only to avoid having all that paper to put in my recycle bin each week.  Loading the whole paper might be a space hog, but that's what memory cards are for.  Imagine, the whole newspaper, in an electronic, searchable, archivable format.  Now, that would be a history student's dream.   Scott

11-28-2002, 06:29 AM	#5
Alexander Turcic Fully Converged Posts: 18,171 Karma: 14021202 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Switzerland Device: Too many to count here.	saw9000, I agree. Also, I think the current PDA devices are not mass-market ready yet. They are expensive, use a lot of a battery, and the LCD displays don't work very well in bright rooms or outside environments. What I hope will be a breakthrough is E-Ink as an alternative to LCD. First working prototypes are already out and look very promising. First market products could debut within the next two years. ZDNet has some more info.

11-28-2002, 09:00 PM	#6
saw9000 Zealot Posts: 118 Karma: 4598 Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Baton Rouge	I think PDA's, as they stand, are ready for the mass market.  The question, in my mind, is whether or not the mass market is ready for them.  The devices have been refined a lot since the beginning.  Development has come from black and white, to monochrome, to color, and all the way to hi-res color.  There are corporate devices, entertainment devices, consumer devices, etc.  However, there are not enough people who know what can truly be done with such a device to make for a big market for PDA's.  There will simply have to be something to inform people without question how useful these devices can be.  From there, I think the sky is the limit.   As for electronic ink, the idea sounds great.  Once it gets here, it will be interesting to see how it does at market.  However, I think it will have to be in color to compete with today's LCD devices.   Scott

05-26-2003, 09:23 AM	#7
RockerChick Enthusiast Posts: 40 Karma: 22 Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Device: NX70v	You all make interesting points, but there are people, like my parents (in their 60s) and my Sig Other (in his 30s) who PREFER paper. They all have PDAs (my hand-me-downs) but wouldn't part with reading the newspaper if their life depended on it.

06-02-2003, 01:47 AM	#8
saw9000 Zealot Posts: 118 Karma: 4598 Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Baton Rouge	I quite agree with you. In fact, I have noticed the same thing among my own family and friends. My girlfriend has pretty much converted and decided to start reading eBooks. My father is now using his wireless phone as his main PIM, and I'm really trying to get him into handhelds. The conversion seems to be working, albeit slowly. As for the rest of my friends and family, there are a few really tough cookies among them. My mother likes books enough to devote a room of the house to them. A friend of mine likes paper enough to be studying to become an archivist, so I don't hold out much hope for her. In general, I think that some people will probably never want to convert to the benefits of electronic media. However, there are a lot of people who, given the chance, would gladly carry around ten or twenty novels and an encyclopedia in a device which fits in a shirt pocket. In fact, I think the market would be a lot bigger if more people knew that this were possible. Scott

06-02-2003, 08:57 AM	#9
crh3f Member Posts: 21 Karma: 40 Join Date: Jun 2003 Device: Sony Clie NR70V	Rocker, you're correct that there are people who won't part with paper. I'm in medical school, and all of our lecture notes and everything are available online, as powerpoints, etc. A great amount of my class actually goes and prints it all out, sacrificing color pics and quality for the feel of good old hardcopy. However, even though they still hold on to this, people who have gone, or have moved towards, paperless are not looked at as unique...so, in my opinion, in 10 years, while there will still be a lot of holdouts, getting content on a PDA will be "a" norm, if not "the" norm.

06-06-2003, 08:27 AM	#10
brahamt Groupie Posts: 165 Karma: 6622 Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: United States Device: Palm Tungsten T3	I have been a PDA users for the last 15 years and a Palm user for almost half that time. Unfortunately, as some will tell you, I am kind of evangelical about certain things that have truly changed my life (Palm PDA, Tivo, weekly lawn service, etc). As much as I demonstrate how superior the technology is to datebooks, planners, address books, etc, there is a set of people who prefer the paper. As a matter of fact, one of my old bosses, got a beautiful Palm Vx a few years back from her husband. She spent several days inputting all of her data, and never left her paper. She did end up printing out the address book to stick in her planner (it was cleaner). The one thing I am sure of, is that there is a set of people (and they are not a trivial group) who will never move to paperless. I work in the Document Imaging industry, so even when they move to paperless it generates more paper. I once had a customer who moved all of their application process to a Document Image system. The process was completely paperless. I later discovered that at the end of the process they were printing every single document out for auditting!!!! So eBooks, eNews, and all of this stuff will eventually replace paper, but not in the near term. If you would have invested in a paper company when the IBM PC was introduced, you'd be very wealthy.

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07-24-2003, 08:04 AM	#11
TadW Uebermensch Posts: 2,583 Karma: 1094606 Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Italy Device: Kindle	According to this article, it is impossible for the Internet to replace a book. I think Jayasankaran is wrong here and he forgets to consider future technologies like E Ink's flippable pages. Personally I already prefer the ebook to the pbook.

10-30-2003, 07:53 AM	#12
DaNDeE Connoisseur Posts: 65 Karma: 25 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Germany Device: Newton/iPhone/iPad	Hey, I just figured out that the most common readers like Mobypocket have been ported to symbian s60 smartphones, hence that not even the PDAnerds are able to take their library with them, now even those with a "stupid" mobile can do. Think this is worth a new threat in the Bookreaders section, istn't it? I guess, this is step further in e-paper direction, but it will take ages, to get rid of a newspaper as such. For people on this forum it is normal to deal with the net and finding their propriate news, books, or what ever, but for the elder among us this is not common. My father e.g. has his own library, which counts hundreds fo books - the whole house is stuffed with books. I showed him the ebooks on my PDA, but he was not interested. First he likes real books (no way to change this) and second he believes, that he is far to old, to learn how to handle a pda. I think, that this are the two main reasons, why paper will last for at least the next 30 years, until the "old", no-tech generation is gone and the handling of the whole e-paper subject has become daily business and easy as buying your newspaper today.