Wired’s “Gadget Lab” blog has an article looking at five areas in which it thinks e-book readers will improve considerably over the course of 2010. The iPad has caused a shakeup in the industry, and other e-book device manufacturers might well rushing to incorporate any improvement that could give them an edge.

“E-readers today are where the pre-iPod MP3 players were,” says Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition, a design firm that worked on Barnes & Noble’s Nook. “It’s still very early and development is just beginning to ramp up.”

The projected areas of improvement include touchscreen technology, color displays, lightweight flexible displays, the software that drives the devices, and screen contrast. At the moment, all of these areas are fairly lacking. Touchscreens cause readers’ displays to be considerably dimmer than those of readers without them, for instance.

By the end of the year, these might well have improved considerably, and the article covers the possibilities in detail.

1 COMMENT

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.