The printer may be dying but it may become the next killer app.
Imagine if e-book readers become cheap enough. You can develop a cheap stand-alone e-paper page where instead of printing on paper, it prints out the contents into your e-book. (The emphasis is on cheap because the hardware cannot be an e-book reader, it can only store temporary data like paper.)
Now after you read it, you can put it back on the printer and it will delete the data. The catch is that it has a large enough storage data to support 10000 pages.
Now if you want a higher priced model, you can buy a model that can be folded out or be portable or be extra durable. In fact, you can save all the costs for the additional features of an e-book reader and instead get a 5-10 set of these that is much easier in the hand to hold and much more durable.
You could even pursue getting back the dividends from these by supporting for digital rental libraries where people can just insert one of these and borrow a book from a database. Catch being it is read until you delete.
It may not be the next generation of tablet pcs/cellphone hybrids or e-book readers but I'd rather get one of these if the cost differential is different enough compared to the cost of those other portable hardware.
...but of course it has a major flaw of not having wi-fi but still... better reason to make it cheap.
