Special Report: E-paper Rising … Exploring Amazon Kindle rumors and sales estimates, and a tough, new player entering the e-book market.

If 120,000 units are shipped per month, as PVI reportedly anticipates, Schnittman wrote, “These numbers will look much better—to the tune of a combined 1.4 million units over 12 months! Even with the Kindle out of stock for a big chunk of the first and second quarter, combined sales of these two e-ink devices in 2008 will most likely top 1 million. If a million devices are out on the street looking to feed, and we know they primarily eat one kind of food, e-books, then what must this mean for the e-book sales?”

Amazon also seems to be fervently gathering up more content to fuel the Kindle. The company recently announced that 11 Christian book publishers—including Thomas Nelson and Zondervan—have committed to making the majority of their titles available to Kindle owners by the year’s end. Religious books are a large and growing market, with sales up 6.3 percent in 2007 from 2006, according to the annual “Trends Report” by the Book Industry Study Group.

We’ll just have to wait and see whether or not the report on the new Kindle formats is true. And, assuming it is, we’ll have to wonder what advancements will accompany a move by Amazon to produce a larger (8.5-inch by 11-inch third-generation) device … one that is, umm, the size of a magazine.

The Readius E-Reader to Launch This Fall
In the meantime, Polymer Vision will launch its Readius—the “first pocket e-book reader”—in Europe this fall and in the United States in early 2009, according to Thomas van der Zijden, Polymer Vision’s vice president of marketing & sales. The new device will feature a flexible display and a wireless connection for downloading books, magazines and even e-mail.

According to the company, “Readius is exclusive as it pioneers rollable displays,” so it’s about the size of a cellphone when it’s rolled up, and unrolls into a 5-inch diagonal screen. (Go to www.Readius.com to see pictures of the device.)