As the eBook-reader market is just starting to evolve, prices are way too high for a sustainable usage in most developing countries. Prices must come down below 50$ before we should start to consider eBook-reader as proper tools for education. Why do I propose 50$?
When we analyse the "Base of the pyramid" segments (cp. Hammond et a. 2007) with an annual income below 3000 US-$, and look at their expenditure for education and ICT, we can get an idea on how much they would be able to afford for ICT devices. For example, in Colombia we have around 25 million people living at the BoP segment with a mean annual expenditure of 1.745$ per person, and they spend 1.4% for education and 1,8 % for ICTs. Taking this numbers as a very generalised basis we can assume that they will be able to afford a nonrecurring investment up to 55$ for an educational device. For other countries it is even less: e.g. Nigeria: about 15$ only.
The discussion comes at the right time as we really have to think how eBook-reader and eBooks can support education, especially at the Base of the pyramid.