III. Industry Analysis
[Company Name]directly or indirectly competes with all e-book sellers and with brick and mortar retailers of travel books. Direct competition will come from companies selling digital travel books, similar to [Company Name].
Industry Statistics & Trends
The following industry size facts and statistics bode well for [Company Name].
According to an industry report, the US e-book industry is estimated at $1.5 billion (not including e-readers and magazines). This translates to roughly $1 billion for content providers and $500 million for distributors. Major e-book sellers include Amazon, Ebooks.com, the Ebookstore from Sony, Ereader.com.
An industry report by Outsell explained the following:
The e-books market seems to have been poised for greatness for many years, although the time has never been quite right. The launches of two popular handheld devices in the past two years – the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle – as well as the availability of applications to read e-books on devices like the iPod Touch and the iPhone have thrust e-books back into the spotlight, re-igniting interest from consumers, business users, students, and publishers. While technology and content issues remain, e-books have now taken their rightful place as an important strategic building block in many publishers’ digital strategies, and account for an estimated 2.9% of the US book market.
These are additional e-book market trends:
- Books written specifically as e-books and self-published are a growing market trend. Some of these e-books are offered without charge on the internet and others are sold.
- The growth in digital readers (specifically the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader), smartphones capable of displaying books (such as the Blackberry, iPhone, and iPod Touch), and netbooks (small, inexpensive laptop computers) all increase the number of platforms available for e-books to be read on.
