E-books & Kids

3-way race for color e-readers this holiday season

It’s going to be a colorful holiday season, with three rivals for the color e-book market heating up their marketing efforts.

For rival “A,” Amazon, the holiday shopping period starts for Amazon’s Kindle Fire on November 15, 2011. This color e-reader tablet will also stream movies and TV shows. Pre-orders of the upcoming color e-reader put Amazon on track to sell more than five million this season. The Fire is priced at $199.

But rival “B’ over at that big brick and mortar bookstore, Barnes and Noble, is fighting back. On November 7, they’ll be making a big announcement. What will they say? Not sure, but rumor has it they’re introducing a new version of the Nook. The color Nook goes for a bout $249, though analysts say B&N may lower the price to make it competitive.

Finally, there’s rival “I” for the Apple iPad, (We had to call it I, A’s already taken). This device runs both Nook and Kindle, but it costs about double the price of a dedicated e-reader. You can do a lot more than read with an iPad, but for your average person, the iPad must be considered when looking into e-readers.

Which of the three will most consumers choose this year? Will a clear winner emerge after the holidays? It’s too early to tell whether this will stay a three-horse race, or one or even two will drop down to second-choice status.  What we can predict is healthy sales in the overall category of e-readers.