In the eBook business, it's the eBook distributors and retailers who have the power, not the reader manufacturers. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and Kobo will continue to do well, since they've got content, readers and established distribution channels. Distributors like Ingram and Baker & Taylor have an opportunity to serve as "arms merchants" for those reader vendors without a strong in-house source of content, but in general, the non-integrated reader vendors are going to have a very difficult time of it. The readers themselves have largely become commodity products; factories in China and Taiwan can crank out just about any variation you want, so product differentiation is almost impossible. iRex is likely to be only the first of a string of failed eBook reader vendors.
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