Andrew Savikas has an interesting post on the importance that mobile multi-purposes device will eventually gain – or has already gained – compared to the dedicated devices like the Kindle, the Sony Reader and so on.

It’s a sustaining against a disruptive approach, Savikas argues. Mobile devices are more affordable and portable. And I would add they are already more widespread, besides having less (let’s call them) psychological barriers: people are buying them for doing lots of things, with reading being just one of them, and certainly not the main one. It’s still early to see who will emerge the winner – if there will be (only) one – but the argument for the mobile multi-purposes devices it’s strong. They will be with any probability the real driver for the explosion of the e-book market, despite the smaller screens and retroillumiation.

The related question is: what will become of the (e)book? Different formats bring to different texts: it would also be possible to argue that an e-book  readable on an iPhone will have to be designed entirely differently from one readable on a dedicated device – which once again brings to some heavy-thinking on the workflow side.

And then there’s the tablet, of course. And anything else will appear in the near future.