One of the biggest challenges to not living in the United States is the additional wait time for all Apple technology releases. For some reason, we’re always a few months behind. So I’ve only had my iPad (64GM, 3G enabled) since June. During that time, I’ve realized a few key things about it.

1) Reading books on a backlit screen is challenging. Indoors, it’s fine. Outdoors, there’s glare that only gets worse in bright sunlight. The saving grace is reading at night in the dark — then the backlit screen is wonderful.

2) The iPad is very heavy compared to the other e-readers I’ve tried (Sony, Kobo, Nook, & Kindle). And heavy is the last thing you want in a portable reading device, as it reminds you too much of a p-book.

3) It’s totally fun to play free downloadable games on it. (Many hours of mindless distraction later, I still keep gravitating back to solitare.)

4) It holds a ton of music and video, and syncs my calendar, contacts, and multiple email accounts. Plus it can take notes and access web pages, not to mention the 200,000+ apps that do things I didn’t even know were missing from my life. The recent firmware upgrade has added some nice functionality.

The iPad was never meant to be an e-book reader only. The iBookstore is a good add-on for Apple, but it will never make them much money. The publishing industry doesn’t need to worry as much as the music industry did about iTunes (that was a game changer).

What the iPad really does is make laptops and mini-computers obsolete. It’s a completely new way to interact with information; iPod Touches were just the starting point. With the next generation of iPads coming next year, Apple is poised to dominate again. The other options in the market (Galaxy Tab, etc.) just reinforce that it isn’t about reading – it’s about portable connectivity and entertainment. Makes me feel all Star Trekker just thinking about it.

E-readers have faced and overcome a number of issues in the past decade to get as far as they have:

• Technical limitations with the devices (creating the e-ink screens, getting size and weight down, engineering battery life)
• E-book format standardization (co-operation among publishers, much less tech companies, is rare)
• The perceived danger of lowering the price of books and thus their profitability
• A sense of tradition about “paper” books from publishers and readers
• A fear of piracy and bootlegging of books

The one issue that’s becoming more prominent by the day is the battle for market share among the various e-reader producers. Recent price wars have lowered e-reader technology prices by 75%. A first-generation Kindle would have set you back $450. Today, you can get a better version with more features for just $139. In order to stay competitive and maintain its price point of $149, the Kobo had to add wireless capability.

There are currently dozens of different e-readers on the market. This will change dramatically in the next year as price wars continue and the e-readers with fewer features or higher prices get muscled out. Already there have been casualties, such as the plasticLogic Que reader, which folded before it even launched. Expect to see many more e-reader brands die off.

Although the market for e-readers is growing at an astonishing rate (192% year-to-date and a record 172.4% in August over July of this year), it’s still a relatively small market worldwide with many competitors battling to add features while keeping prices low enough for the purchasing cycle to continue. There will be winners and there will be losers.

The overall war will be won by the companies that provide the best access to content AND the most flexibility to use that content. The Amazon Kindle has an early market lead and the clout to keep going. It just added a lending feature to compete with the Nook. More important, it recently launched — just in time for the Christmas buying season — a feature that allows people to give e-books as gifts, an e-reader functionality matched only by Kobo. If the Kobo can continue to grow, it has a good chance of being the number 2 e-reader, surpassing the Nook (see why here).

This year’s holiday season will be an important test. Come January, we should have a pretty good idea of how the e-reader market will shake out.