According to a new report by Forrester Research’s Sarah Rotman Epps, eBooks and eReaders are slowly but surely becoming mainstream. However, while Amazon is the current market leader among early adopters of this technology, Rotman Epps predicts that later adopters will not feel the same loyalty towards Amazon. This, according to the report, will open up a lot of opportunities for other players in the market, including Sony and large mass-market retailers like Walmart.

According to Forrester’s data, just about 1.5% of all US online consumers currently own an eReader - but it’s important to note that this number is up from 0.6% a year ago. Forrester estimates that about 3 million eReader will be sold in the US in 2009. By 2013, this number will grow to 13 million. Now, more consumers than ever before are aware of the existence of eReaders (37%) and the number of survey respondents who intend to buy an eReader in the next six months has grown to 6% compared to 2% last year.

Seen at ReadWriteWeb