A previous post talked about the new eBook device “nook” introduced by Barnes & Noble. The announcment follows the book price war between Amazon and WalMart that happened just one week before. I’m wondering if the publishing industry is entering a 2nd business evolution after the internet era. In this post today, however,  I just focus on the eBook reader market.

Amazon says that people using Kindles now buy 3.1 times as many books as they did before owning a Kindle. Sony says that its eBook customers download about 8 books a month, on average. These numbers show  a 6.7 books purchasing increase with respect to the average American buyer in 2008. I still worry about the near future growth of the eBook market, although I really want to have one for myself as well. Consider these two aspects :

1. Recession is a 2-side sword for the eBook sales. One advantage of the eBook sales is the changing in the cost structure; because of that they can tag a much lower price than traditional book, and more customers are aware of the lower price tag. On the other hand customers will tight their gadget expense during recession.

2. The sale growth of ebook readers might slow down if there is no more fundamental materials to be offered in the near future. Addressing new cosntituencies like the education and corporate market. The particular market sector couldn’t sustain the whole business.

The following chart shows the basic perspective of the eBook market for some major players.

The cool thing that hit me after studying these eBook devices is that I discovered that most of them had already solved my concerns related to the customer behavior part. For instance, you can find beautiful Text Highlight and Note functions in Sony’s PRS-600SC. And “Lend-me” function in Nook. Purchasing availability when traveling abroad on Kindle.

After Alex’s sharing of LifeIO(input and output of life or Life io, both seems make sense for the name), I took the chance to try this trendy service. The concept of LifeIO is brilliant and practical, but already not new in the market. These kind of web application tends to gather and to combine all your digital life in one single frame. Which includes your email, chat, social network, personal feed, shopping information. It’s really convenience to have a place that you can organize all of these without navigating between different pages.

Here are some of my personal opinions after using LifeIO several days. The integration degree is the top challenge for this kind of web application. They have to try their best to be compatible with most famous web services. For instance, I started using LifeIO from social network function. It is designed to be easy work with Twitter and Facebook. At the beginning, I tried it with Facebook Connection. They asked for my agreements to gather information from other web services. But making it work without asking my account and password was a little bit frightened for me. I suppose this process came from Facebook Connection. Honestly, this is not enough for security and privacy issue for sure. Can you and I trust this?

The second step in LifeIO was email account setting. LifeIO also offer the chatting function for your Gmail, MSN, AOL. But they just make your MSN account with chatting function but not email. I’m struggling again here. Since I still couldn’t find where is my MSN contact window in LifeIO, and also couldn’t receive message when I asked my friend for testing. Well, forget about MSN, I have another Yahoo email account which is supported by LifeIO. Here I was disappointed by LifeIO again. Because I don’t have a VIP Yahoo email service, and LifeIO couldn’t accept my Yahoo account without going through POP setting. It is appears that the email function in LifeIO was particularly designed for Gmail or other email accounts with POP/IMAP capability.

There are still some other flaws I discovered from my LifeIO journey. But back to what I said at the beginning, the concept is not exactly new and the top challenge is the integration degree. In this overcrowded area, LifeIO have to make things as simple as possible and have to make them work as they declared.

I have been used this new service from Google for a while. I might be a little bit late to say something about Google Fast Flip. But here are some impressions that I had so far.

Have you ever think that the fullness of information might explode your brain out one day?  This kind of feeling overwhelmed me before. The way that how we organize and exploit the information now is the major reason for this.

Fast Flip sorts the information from popularity, sector, topic and source. I found most of my general online news source there. You can pick your favorite sources up to 6 in 39. Covering range not just in news report but also some entertainment, leisure and fashion sources.

Even I didn’t pick up sources by my interesting at the beginning. They have standard sources for me. Well, it might just looks standard. But they supposed already gave me the news sources base on the news websites that I usually visit. Nevertheless, I feel more efficient to read news with Fast Flip‘s help. I roughly browse the news topics that I always focus on, and the design of Fast Flip layout gave me some similar reading experience with traditional newspaper. I can read short topics with captured views of news pages, more easier to jump between categories of topics and sectors.

What’s Google doing here? I think once you start using this service, they would willing to give you capability to customize your own preference. Once you customized it, they could study costumer’s interests more accurately. Just like what Facebook and other customer behavior research companies are doing now. So, that’s why after you clicking the pages that you want to read, they are more capable to deliver some interesting messages than before. Not just base on you browsing history from browser cookies but also your Google account.

Yesterday Google officially announced that they are delivering the Google Voice service to Android and BlackBerry platform. You can start to download the app from yesterday. The iPhone version is also on the way and will be available soon.

Have you ever heard Google Voice? And idea about what is the difference between Google Voice and Skype? Google Voice is the project that came from the “GrandCentral” acquisition in 2007, July. It was the service only with invitation since March/2009. Both of Google Voice and Skype are free to talk through internet interface. So, why Google got into this area?

Here I found some answers for you. Separately from customer and Google’s point of view.

Customer point of view:

1. Lower communication fee (of course, so far everything from Google is free!!!)
2. Check phone calls anywhere, even without phones. Other mobile devices with voice and internet function would enlarge the coverage of voice communication that never reached before.
3. Voicemail transcript! Revolution of telecommunication from analog to digital again. Read what the voicemail says, receive voicemails via email or sms, capable to back up and to download or forward.
4. Easier to store the communication information that generate by phones before.

Google’s point of view:

1. More opportunities to increase the effeciecy of Consumer Behavior Studying. Then, aim to increase the effectiveness and accuracy in advertisement business. Since we’re studying private management here. I’m wondering that what will happen in privacy issue if a company have such plenty of ways to read private communication.
2. 146million gmail user VS 443million skype user [42.2million active daily user]. After Google release Google voice on Android and BlackBerry platform. The number of gmail account is expected keep increasing with mobile phone sales. The same strategy to enlarge the scale will be adopted in release of Google’s OS Chrome in 2010.
3. According to Craig Walker, Google Voice senior PM, there is no any business model for Google Voice currently. But Google Voice is expected that will charge customer for international calls in the future. Consider the potential communication revenue shifting. Take a look to skype’s history revenues, the revenue increased 4 times in 3 years when traditional telecom companies are facing lower and lower tariff.