Quick: What's the most popular e-book reader? You're probably wrong.

Amazon's Kindle has become the breakthrough e-reader since it was introduced only three years ago, fueling a nearly $1 billion business that Forrester Research says will triple in the next five years.

But it is edged out by the humble laptop as the e-reader of choice, according to a Forrester survey released Monday. Laptop users could very well be reading Kindle editions on a computer using software provided by Amazon, and may be motivated to merely avoid a third device (assuming a phone is also a necessary one). But the choice may be very interesting to Google, whose "Editions" e-book service (which was supposed to launch this past summer) would be an entirely web-based store, requiring no special device or software.

Laptops only slightly trump the Kindle, 35 percent to 32 percent. Coming in third was the iPhone, with 15 percent, followed by a Sony e-reader (12 percent), netbooks (10 percent) and the Barnes & Noble Nook (9 percent). Also at 9 percent was the iPad.

In what is either great or awful news for the vendors of e-readers, half of the respondents said they had borrowed a book in the last six months. This is barely possible with a Kindle or a Nook, which lets you "lend" a book once, for only two weeks — forget about it on any other platform. And it would seem that borrowing the old-fashioned way hasn't gone out of style: 38 per cent said they checked a book out of a library. An equal number said they had bought a book from a chain store.

For all of the hoopla only 7 percent of U.S. online adults currently read e-books, Forrester found. Among those who don't, 8 percent said they expected to in a year – which means the audience would double. And once readers taste digital, they rapidly convert from print, Forrester said – asked what proportion of the books they expect to read a year from now would be e-books, the current e-book readers in the survey gave an average of 51 percent.

And it is this metric which prompts Forrester Analyst James McQuivey to speculate that e-books will be a $3 billion business by 2015, "a point at which the industry will be forever altered."

And the biggest winner in the e-book sweepstakes? Forrester says it will be ... the Kindle.

"Sure, other eReaders have been introduced that are intriguing, but Amazon has a secret weapon: an existing relationship with a large share of all book buyers," Forrester said. "Four in 10 people who own or expect to buy an eReader shop at Amazon for physical books. Exactly 50% of people who bought an eBook in the past month have bought eBooks from Amazon’s Kindle store."

"This is why we’re convinced that Amazon’s Kindle store will be the most used eBook store, even on the iPad or any other platform open to its Kindle apps."

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