SAN FRANCISCO — , which has dominated the young but fast-growing electronic-book market for the past few years with the Kindle, could get its biggest threat Saturday, when Apple releases its iPad multimedia tablet.
The Kindle starts at $259 and is designed mainly for reading text on a gray-and-black screen. The iPad starts at $499, but with the higher price come more functions: a color touch screen for downloading books from Apple’s new iBookstore, surfing the Web, playing videos and games and more.
It will take time to determine whether the iPad causes a tremor in the e-reader market or a large quake.
If the Kindle e-reader falls out of favor, there could be a silver lining for Amazon: It sells e-books that can be read on many devices, including the iPad and other Apple gadgets.
Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies Inc., says the iPad signals the start of a larger shift away from static digital versions of books and magazines. Eventually, e-books will be expected to have multimedia dimensions, with video and interactive elements, he says, which calls for something more like Apple’s tablet device than something largely dedicated to reading. The Associated Press
