E-readers have dropped off in popularity a lot, so I guess the novelty was a big factor, and the iPad was good enough for many. But personally I still frequently use mine. If you're a frequent reader, and you're reading stuff fit for the format (i.e., it's not a PDF and you are mostly just reading sequentially, not flipping back and forth), it's just the best way to read. That was especially true when I had a train commute and didn't want to lug something heavy around, but even at home, I just don't want more books sitting around when I can read them without dealing with the physical objects.
To me it seems like E-readers are more popular than ever. Onyx has been pushing out so many devices in the last couple of years(the newest ones run Android 11 with pretty decent mid or low range snapdragon SoCs, the last lumi2 has 6GB Ram).
Kobo finally got their act together and moved their manufacturing back to Taiwan and started releasing neat devices including a new a 10 inch note taking devices.
Some of the old manufacturers like Supernote have now become OEMs. There are eink phones, eink mobile readers, remarkable and even the new upcoming pine reader, which looks like a bigme device with custom board.
And I'd say that all the devices coming out now do not have the name recognition of Nooks or the PRST1, let alone the Kindle. At least in the US market; things might be different in Asia.
Yeah, things are perhaps different in the developing countries markets in Asia (maybe even the developed countries).
In India, physical books have always been a lot more popular (and still are) since books are a lot cheaper than in the US (printed on very crappy paper though). But that's also meant that there's a lot more room for ebooks to grow into. The US might be, what, a 30-35% ebooks share at this point? In India, its less than 5% but growing very strongly.
BUT this is not accompanied by ereader sales. Majority of ebooks are read by folks on their phones. (I suspect China has been seeing something similar too with the proliferation of online reading platforms.)
