[douche]

I guess so, but when the basic Kindle costs about the same as a full tank of gas, or just a little more than a newly released AAA video game, it's hard to say that it is really restricted to the wealthy.

The biggest appeal of the Kindle is that you can read it outside in the glare of the sun, and the battery lasts for months. I would agree, that for most people, the smartphone they have in their pocket already is good enough for reading ebooks.

[veddox]

> it's hard to say that it is really restricted to the wealthy.

Good point - eReaders aren't really all that expensive (I got my first one for 60€). What might be more important when considering the distribution of eReaders is the correlation wealthy <-> educated <-> reads a lot.

> for most people, the smartphone they have in their pocket already is good enough for reading ebooks

I can't imagine reading a full book on the tiny screen of a smartphone. Do people really do that? (As in, for serious reading.) And if so, how much?

[douche]

I can't imagine reading anything technical or even most non-fiction on a phone, but for plain old entertainment-grade fiction it's doable. I read most of the Aubrey-Maturin series and The Expanse series on my phone last year.