As an owner of a Sony eReader, I would suggest that the high costs of the readers and ebooks along with a limited range of ebooks would be a more likely cause of the stunted market. The last two books i tried to get in epub format weren't available (the new Chris Brookmyre and AC Grayling's Liberty In The Age Of Terror). Also, the pricing is ridiculous; £19 for an old Dick Francis? Anyone would think that the publishers didn't want ebooks to succeed!

There's an issue of freedom here. Do you want a reader that'll display a range of document formats like PDF and even plain honest text, or one that ties everything in to DRM and Amazon's famously Orwellian control?

I bought the BeBook, precisely because it's designed for free people. It works, it saves a lot of space (compared to paper books), and is hugely convenient to carry around. No sexy label, but I can live with that.

Given that the screens are pretty much the same technology (other than 4, 8, or 16 grey scale), doesn't it partly come down to what the software can do? As Nick said above, BeBook does the job nicely, as does the Astak EZReader and others, all re-branded from that Jink company.

Lets not forget about the OpenInkpot project too, that can work on most reader devices. Although in it's early stages, in time could prove to be feature packed more than the likes of the Kindle and Sony.