Holding out for a £100 e-book reader before snapping up one of these gadgets for yourself? You may get lucky this year, but don't expect prices to fall any further.

Scott Liu, head of screen maker PVI - the Taiwanese firm that recently bought e-ink pioneer E Ink - forecast today that readers will not drop to hit the $100 (£61/€67) mark in 2010.

The reason: the market's too new and there's just too little competition between e-book reader manufacturers, he said, according to a report by DigiTimes.

In such circumstances, there's little motivation for vendors to slash prices, he said. The upshot: prices will remain around the £200-250 mark for some tome to come. ®