Would you pay AU$899 for an eBook Reader?

Dymocks Book Store (Australia) recently started offering digital downloads. Now they have started selling an eReader called iliad for AU$899.

I am not sure if anybody would really buy this device, I certainly won't pay $899 for a device which will just allow me to read books. Am I the only one who thinks the eReaders fail to take off again and aging because they are actually a misconceived device category altogether (at least in the present time).

Don't get me wrong, I do like the concept of eBooks (but, I am yet to download and read one). I just don't think there is really a market for dedicated eReader in present form.

In my opinion young tech savy people are the ones who are going to be interested in eBooks to begin with. This demography already own either a laptop or a high-end mobile phone or both. These devices already have the capability to display PDFs. So why would you pay $899 for yet another device which is going to allow you only to read books when you already have a device(s) which will allow you to do more than that? Also, these days portable Media Players and becoming more prevalent, may be eBooks can be released for these devices.

Luckily, Dymocks is offering the eBooks for Microsoft Reader, Mobipocket Reader and Adobe Reader as well.

While on the subject of eBooks, Sweden's Dagens Nyheter has launched the world's first "newspaper" telephone. Now, this is a good idea.