= PDAs
In the 1990s, Jacques Gauchey was a journalist and writer covering information technology in Silicon Valley. He was also a "facilitator" between the U.S. and Europe. Jacques was among the first to buy a Palm Pilot in March 1996, and wrote about it in his free online newsletter. As a side remark, he remembered in July 1999: "In 1996 I published a few issues of a free English newsletter on the internet. It had about ten readers per issue until the day when the electronic version of Wired Magazine created a link to it. In one week I got about 100 emails, some from French readers of my book "La vallée du risque - Silicon Valley" [The Valley of Risk - Silicon Valley, published by Plon, Paris, in 1990], who were happy to find me again." He added: "All my clients now are internet companies. All my working tools (my mobile phone, my PDA and my PC) are or will soon be linked to the internet."
Palm stayed the leader, despite fierce competition, with 23 million Palm Pilots sold between 1996 and 2002. In 2002, 36.8% of all PDAs available on the market were Palm Pilots. Its main competitor was Microsoft's Pocket PC. The main platforms were Palm OS (for 55% of PDAs) and Pocket PC (for 25,7%). In 2004, prices began to drop. The leaders were the PDAs of Palm, Sony, and Hewlett-Packard, followed by Handspring, Toshiba, and Casio.
= Phones and reading devices
The first smartphone was Nokia 9210, launched as early as 2001. It was followed by Nokia Series 60, Sony Ericsson P800, and the smartphones of Motorola and Siemens. Smartphones took off quickly. In February 2005, Sony stopped selling PDAs. Smartphones represented 3,7% of all cellphones sold in 2004, and 9% of all cellphones sold in 2006, with 90 million smartphones sold for one billion cellphones.
Many people read ebooks on their PDAs, cellphones and smartphones. The favorite readers (software) were Mobipocket Reader (available in March 2000), Microsoft Reader (available in April 2000), Palm Reader (available in March 2001), Acrobat Reader (available in May 2001 for Palm Pilot, and in December 2001 for Pocket PC), and Adobe Reader (available in May 2003 to replace Acrobat Reader).
For cellphones, smartphones and dedicated reading devices, LCD screens have been replaced by screens using the technology developed by E Ink. As explained on the company's website: "Electronic ink is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays. Although revolutionary in concept, electronic ink is a straightforward fusion of chemistry, physics and electronics to create this new material. The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule where they become visible to the user. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot. To form an E Ink electronic display, the ink is printed onto a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver. These microcapsules are suspended in a liquid 'carrier medium' allowing them to be printed using existing screen printing processes onto virtually any surface, including glass, plastic, fabric and even paper. Ultimately electronic ink will permit most any surface to become a display, bringing information out of the confines of traditional devices and into the world around us."
Sony launched its first reading device, Librié 1000-EP, in Japan in April 2004, in partnership with Philips and E Ink. Librié was the first reading device to use the E Ink technology, with a 6-inch screen, a 10 M memory, and a 500- ebook capacity. eBooks were downloaded from a computer through a USB port. The Sony Reader was launched in October 2006 in the U.S. for US $350, followed by cheaper and revamped models.
Amazon.com launched its own reading device, the Kindle, in November 2007. Before launching the Kindle, Amazon.com bought in April 2005 Mobipocket, a French company specializing in ebooks for PDAs, cellphones and smartphones, with a catalog of several thousands of books in several languages to be read on the Mobipocket Reader.
The Kindle was launched with a catalog of 80,000 ebooks - and new releases for US $9,99 each. The built-in memory and 2G SD card gave plenty of book storage (1.4 G), with a screen using the E Ink technology, and page-turning buttons. Books were directly bought and downloaded via the device's 3G wireless connection, with no need for a computer, unlike the Sony Reader. 580.000 Kindles were sold in 2008. A thinner and revamped Kindle 2 was launched in February 2009, with a storage capacity of 1,500 ebooks, a new text-to-speech feature, and a catalog of 230,000 ebooks on Amazon.com's website.