And the beat goes on

Have you ever seen someone read a book on an iPhone or other smart phone? Of course. Not optimal, but happens. But let's don't count such new ereader devices because we have no good idea how many people actually use them for reading ebooks, in addition to the devices' primary role of phoning and emailing. Probably a small minority. (According to exclusive Simba data, about 63% of smartphone owners, 48% of iPad owners and 40% of non-iPad tablet owners do not use e-books. That means only about 37 percent of smart phone users read ebooks.) Let's just try to count people who have purchased ereaders with larger than 5" screens as book reading devices, and even those devices, as we know, could be used for some other function such as gaming or emailing. Does it help at all to keep track of the number of ereader devices sold? Yes, because it tells you whether the beat goes on, or not. But that's about it. That's how I interpret the news that Apple sold 20 million iPads in the first quarter of 2013, compared to 12 million iPads sold during the 2012 first quarter, according to Digital Book World. We have already reported that there are about 50 million ereader users out there, and counting.