Steve Jobs just destroyed nearly all my hopes for an eBook size version of the iTouch (commenting on amazon’s kindle in an interview with NYT):

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

For me 60% is still a pretty big market. I wonder how this compares to the percentage of the people in the U.S.

So lets hope that eBook reading is able to piggy back on the a bigger video playing device build on the iTouch platform ( or maybe even a Newton 2.0). Or that some other vendor steps in. May be Amazon going the other way round like Tim O’Reilly predicted or somebody is going to use Android, e.g. on Sharp’s Zaurus platform. That 4-year old C-700 prototype sitting somewhere in my desk still is very impressive with it’s VGA resolution on a 3.5” screen.

Meanwhile i read Lawrence Lessigs ‘Free Culture’ on the iTouch. Was able to read the equivalent of 150pages during a flight, without any stress on my eyes and draining the battery only half. Not too bad.