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  3. Now that 2012 is over, the Wall Street Journal is pondering whether the e-reader era is coming to an end. Although the story sto

Now that 2012 is over, the Wall Street Journal is pondering whether the e-reader era is coming to an end. Although the story sto

admin2014-06-25  30
问题     Now that 2012 is over, the Wall Street Journal is pondering whether the e-reader era is coming to an end. Although the story stops short of using the "D" word, it notes that e-reader sales hit their peak in 2011, fell sharply in 2012 and will continue to slide in the years ahead. The story dwells on the standard reasons for the e-reader’s forthcoming troubles: Full-featured tablets can read e-books and do much more, and the price gap between e-readers and cheap tablets has narrowed, so it’s harder to justify buying a single-purpose e-reader.
    While it’s provocative to declare in general terms that once-popular technologies are on their way out, I’d rather think about what the actual effects may be.
    For one thing, e-readers aren’t going away anytime soon, at least not until their unique properties can be matched by inexpensive tablets. The fact that e-readers are cheap, are easy to read even in sunlight and can last long on a single battery charge means they can be nice to have around, even if you own a more expensive tablet. There’s also something to be said for their compulsory focus on reading, which eliminates the distractions that tablets provide.
    There’s no threat of forced retirement either, because the e-reader business is different from televisions, where vendors must push newer and better technologies in hopes of raising profit margins. Companies like Amazon aren’t making money on hardware, but are on books purchased through the device, so even as the cost of an e-reader approaches zero, it remains a worthy business. If anything, e-readers are more of a sure bet for e-l>ook sales than tablets, where users can stay entertained with free apps and the web.
    The question, then, is whether e-readers will remain a phenomenon. That’s a trickier one to answer, but I don’t think e-readers have stopped being interesting yet. In the past couple years, we’ve seen the rise of touchscreen e-readers, and there’s still room to lower the cost of those features. There may be other innovations as well, such as flexible E-Ink screens to improve portability.
    For e-readers, the future probably looks a lot like it does for the dedicated MP3 player, and that’s far from disastrous. Apple still sells its iPod Classic, despite years of predictions about its forthcoming death. And the iPod Nano turned into smart watch territory before becoming a credit card-sized music and video player. These devices didn’t go aways they just became better at their core competencies.
    The Wall Street Journal acknowledges many of these points, but nonetheless asserts that the "e-reader era" might be over. But even in dedicated e-readers’ best year, they were overshadowed by tablets. And though tablets will likely keep growing while the e-reader market slips, lots of that growth comes at the cost of laptops as well. The reality is that e-readers never had an era of their own to begin with. They always have, and always will be, outdone by tablets. But they’re still sticking around.
According to the Wall Street Journal, e-reader______.
选项 A、has suffered continued sales slide in the past years
B、has experienced a fast decline in the price
C、has an extremely gloomy prospect ahead
D、has diversified its features and functions
答案C
解析 第一段指出《华尔街日报》在思索“电子阅读器时代是否正走向灭亡”，尽管其报道还未用到“死”这个字眼，但却指出电子阅读器销量在下滑且会继续下滑，并指出原因：来自功能更全、价格日益降低的平板电脑的冲击。可见该报认为电子阅读器前景极为黯淡，[C]选项正确。
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