That's the main takeaway from Wednesdays ominously worded report from IHS, anyway. The numbers are pretty dramatic: By the end of the year, sales of dedicated ebook reading devices will have dropped 36% from 2011. Come 2016, says IHS, total e-reader sale volume will be just two-thirds of what it was last year.

Yikes. Is this really the death of e-readers? 

It makes perfect sense that e-reader sales are falling off a cliff. Tablets are eating their lunch. Not only has Apple sold 84 million iPads to date, but the companies who have dominated the e-reader market are themselves shipping tablets now. 

Consumers are quite naturally drawn to these multi-function, multimedia-capable gadgets that can stream movies, browse the Web, take photos, play Letterpress and do just about anything else app developers can dream up. And yes, those same devices - whose prices keep falling - let you read books too.  

My iPad Is Great, But I Really Want A Kindle

When Steve Jobs first unveiled the iPad, I thought it was absurd. Never would I need to supplement my laptop and iPhone with this giant iPod Touch, I declared.

Today, I use my iPad constantly. It serves as my alarm clock, morning newspaper, TV content provider, futuristic radio, bedtime magazine, digital cookbook and much else. It even helps me do my job. What an incredible gizmo. 

But you know what's the very top of my wish list? Amazon's Kindle Paper White. An e-reader of the very sort whose grave is allegedly being dug by my shiny new iPad. 

The thing about my iPad is that there's too much going on there. It's not quite as busy and distraction-prone as my laptop, but when I'm staring into the growing screen of my tablet, my brain knows about all the options it has. I can check Twitter, refresh my Gmail inbox one more time, page through Flipboard, catch up on my ever-overflowing Instapaper queue or see what videos are bubbling up on YouTube, ShowYou or Frequency. And I don't even play games or use chat apps on my iPad. 

Reading comprises the vast majority of what I do on my iPad. Probably 90% of all the words that my brain processes in a given month come from that glowing, 9.7-inch Retina display. I catch up on Google Reader and Flipboard, but I also delve into longer content on Instapaper, Longform and digital magazines. The thing I can never seem to make my way to is the Kindle app, where the books are waiting. 

The Underrated Value Of A Single-Use Device

That's why I want a Kindle. After a day of dinging notifications, multitasking and hopping from app to app, my brain could really use the respite of a device that does only one thing. 

Why, you might ask, don't I just pick up a paperback book and put the gadgets away?

I certainly do that from time to time, but the inescapable reality is that more and more content exists in digital space. Like analog records, I'll always have a physical bookshelf, but most of what I consume will be digital. There's just more new stuff there, and it's more easily accessible. Some big name authors are now going directly through Amazon, with or without a print edition. If I get a PDF copy of a new book or want to get a sample a chapter, I need to turn to a gadget to read those things. E-readers might be on the decline, but e-books aren't going anywhere. 

Perhaps I could just turn off my iPad's Wi-Fi, launch the Kindle app and, for crying out loud, exercise a little self-control. I do that from time to time, too. And it works. But sometimes I'd like to leave the backlit, multifunction gadgets at home and not even have the option to do other stuff. I'd also like to do read an e-book on the beach without squinting to see the text or risk dropping a $600 device in the sand. 

So the Kindle it is. I very much have room for both devices in my life, and I doubt I'm the only one.

All things considered, it makes complete sense that dedicated e-readers are selling less - and that that decline will continue as tablet prices drop. But I don't think we should write off e-readers off quite yet. At least, I hope not. I've got a hell of a reading queue to catch up on. 

Flipboard’s most literate new category will serve as a portal to Apple’s iBookstore, which is stuffed with over 1.5 million titles. Each book in Flipboard offers a synopsis and an iBook link, so readers can readily purchase a must-read for their iBooks library. 

The Books section is divided into categories including literature, biographies and memoirs and history -- and less-erudite readers can flip through cookbooks and travel guides too. The new category launched with tailor-made bookshelves for the United States, Canada, the U.K., Brazil, Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. Naturally, it sounds like Android Flipboard users won't see the new category. 

Flipboard is a social magazine by definition, but with the iBooks integration, the app will move into catalog territory. We can only imagine that swiping through Flipboard’s intoxicatingly visual bookshelves might have some patrons lining up for their Apple-issued library cards.

What Apple Showed

When Apple made its first official foray into digital textbooks earlier this year, I was skeptical. It seemed clear that iBooks 2, iBooks Author and the new "textbooks" section of the iBookstore would not revolutionize the education market anytime soon, even if the longterm potential was obvious. Tuesday, Apple shared some early results from those efforts and revealed the next phase of its overhaul of education. It's definitely onto something. 

Most of the 100 million iPads sold worldwide were purchased by consumers and businesses, but a growing number of those buyers are school districts. In the last nine months, 2,500 classrooms have started using iBooks textbooks, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced. Their content now covers 80% of the core high school curriculum in the United States. It's not a bad start, but Apple has a long way to go before iBooks makes an iTunes-like impact. 

The next wave of that impact won't come from iBooks 3 or the new version of iBooks Author, which are both nice, but relatively minor updates. If anything from Tuesday's event will help push digital textbook adoption forward, it's the hardware. Specifically, the iPad Mini. By offering a $329 tablet, Apple suddenly made iPad adoption notably more affordable for cash-strapped school districts. Apple also released the fourth generation 10-inch iPad, which should help drive down the price of the company's older devices as well. 

Indeed, the cost of these iPad-based programs is one of their biggest logistical handicaps, especially in urban school districts. I live in Philadelphia, where the public schools are forever plagued by budget cuts. The teachers I know have to ask for donations from the community (or pay from their own pocket) just to ensure's there are enough pencils and reams of paper. Their students aren't going to see $500 tablet computers anytime soon. A $329 iPad is bit easier to swallow for educators set on bringing iOS, rather than cheaper Android or Windows tablets into the classroom. Give it a few years, and these things will be dirt cheap. 

Apple's Not the Only Player, But It's Still Apple

Of course, Apple has plenty of competition, both on the hardware front and when it comes to educational content. Because of the iPad's premium price tag, some schools are experimenting with Kindle Fires and other Android-based tablets. The 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab, for example, is considerably cheaper than the iPad mini. One fifth grade classroom that tried deploying the Galaxy Tab found it to be effective overall, but software glitches continually interrupted the experience for students. That's something that the Apple fan boys will be quick to point out: The iPad, as they say, just works.

There's some truth to that. Compared to Android, iOS is more polished and intuitive, but what Android tablets may lack in user experience, they typically make up in more affordable hardware. 

The iBookstore isn't the first place to offer digital textbooks, either. Startups like Inkling, Chegg and Kno were reimagining the textbook for a digital world long before Apple started getting serious about its role in education's future. Meanwhile, Amazon has its own e-textbook storefront and rental program and Barnes and Noble offers its own digital learning tool called Nook Study. 

While the educatiuonal space is filling up, it's also relatively young. So far, Apple has made one of  the most direct pushes into it. We don't see Amazon pushing the Kindle Fire as the next big thing in classrooms, for instance. Not yet, anyway.

As is often the case, Apple has a tremendous advantage by virtue of the fact that it's Apple. The iPad's dominant position in the marketplace gives it the best shot of carving out a meaningful segment of the education market, where its sights are now very deliberately set.

The new iBooks app will feature better integration with iCloud, continuous scrolling and support for dozens of new languages. Apple is also whittling away at its own walled garden a little bit by letting readers share passages via Facebook and Twitter.

Apple has been baking social networks more deeply into its operating systems, and this update is a nice touch. The inability to share short excerpts with friends was a palpable shortcoming in iBooks until today.

It's not just eBook readers that are getting new features today. Apple is also pushing out a new version of iBooks Author, the drag-and-drop publishing tool used to create books for the iBookstore. iBooks Author features new templates and embeddable fonts. 

A new push in education 

In January, Apple took aim at the education market when it launched iBooks 2 and started offering digital textbooks in the iBookstore. While iBooks 3 is a more subtle update, Apple is emphasizing the growing role iPads play in education and has some numbers to tout. The iBooks platform now covers 80% of the core curriculum in U.S. high schools and more than 2,500 classrooms are using iBooks textbooks, Cook said. 

Apple also addressed one common criticism about the iPad's viability in the classroom this morning: the price. Alongside the fourth generation iPad, the company unveiled the iPad Mini, a $329 tablet with a 7.9-inch display.

The lower price point will make the iPad Mini an attractive option for cash-strapped school districts, while also pushing the competition in a way that is sure to impact the tablet market overall.