Early last year, Silicon Insider calculated that the New York Times could halve their subscription costs by giving each subscriber a Kindle, rather than delivering hard copies. Newspapers around the world are failing every week as people stop buying papers and the ad money which covers much of their costs gets spread more thinly.

India doesn’t have these problems. Newspapers cost a couple of rupees and are available on your doorstep or every second street corner, and the readership of most papers is increasing, or at least not nose diving. After the costs of purchasing a digital reader, switching to a digital format of newspapers wouldn’t save me money or time. Another advantage of a paper format is that it can be shared among many people. Can you imagine someone on a train passing their ipad around so that strangers can read the sports section?

Similarly with books. If every new, popular book is available at traffic signals at low cost, then the only advantage of a digital book reader is the ability to order unpopular books that aren’t carried by Indian bookstores, which is obviously a small market.

Same again with music/video. Until the low cost and ready availability of pirate media is removed, there is limited reason for people to own a device that is focused on the purchase and management of these media.