Kindle And iPad Lose Reading Speed Race To Print

Print has won at least one victory over the e-readers including the Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) Kindle and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad. Readers can read printed content more quickly than material downloaded to electronic devices.

Jakob Nielsen Research found that a short story by Ernest Hemingway which took on average 17 minutes and 20 seconds to read were read 6.2% more slowly on the iPad and  10.7% more slowly on the Kindle 2. User satisfaction with print, the Kindle, and the iPad were all high. On a scale of 1 to 7, e-readers and books all had ratings in the 5.8 to 5.6 range. The PC as a reader had a rating of only 3.6.

The data points to why digital print content never caught on with PC users, but it also indicates that print may not succumb to the e-reader as quickly as analysts think. Book prices have come down because of pressure from e-reader stores, the price disadvantage that printed books and periodicals have had has largely gone away. E-reader and printed material are more portable than most PCs, whose screens are hard to read in bright sunlight.  This takes the PC almost entirely out of the competitive landscape as a download-and-read device.

Print may perhaps remain the preferred method for consuming written content for decades. Books and magazines are less expensive than e-books because people do not need a device to read traditional media. Kindle and iPads cost between $150 and $800. That is a lot of money for a more portable book.

An e-reader can download a e-book in about 60 seconds. That will continue to give it an edge over  a printed version. But, most people do not reader a dozen books in one outing. Shopping for books in bookstores is still fun for many people. A book may be heavy, but it is a faster read.

Douglas A. McIntyre