News
Apple iBooks Store Challenges Amazon's Kindle Hardware
[Glenn is on the scene in San Francisco.]
Apple will offer electronic books for the iPad, its newly announced tablet, challenging the supremacy of Amazon's Kindle.
Apple's version, called iBooks, has five major publishers signed up so far—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon and Schuster—and is opening up to additional publishers today. Apple did not disclose the initial size of its library.
The iBooks viewer supports images and videos, and relies on the industry-standard EPUB book format. It will be trivial for publishers to make titles available for the iBooks library. iPad users will be able to purchase books through an iTunes Store-like interface. Book pricing wasn't discussed at the launch.
The original book page numbering is preserved—addressing one major problem with the Kindle, which uses a location number to allow device-independent reading without the same bookmarks and placemarks. Without having common page numbers across devices, it's extremely difficult to use ebooks for research citations.
Since Amazon offers a Kindle application for the iPhone that will also work on the iPad, Amazon immediately has a huge library of books available for the new device. If Amazon swings this right, the company may see a large surge in purchases of books that are never read on Kindle hardware.
Apple will offer electronic books for the iPad, its newly announced tablet, challenging the supremacy of Amazon's Kindle.
Apple's version, called iBooks, has five major publishers signed up so far—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon and Schuster—and is opening up to additional publishers today. Apple did not disclose the initial size of its library.
The iBooks viewer supports images and videos, and relies on the industry-standard EPUB book format. It will be trivial for publishers to make titles available for the iBooks library. iPad users will be able to purchase books through an iTunes Store-like interface. Book pricing wasn't discussed at the launch.
The original book page numbering is preserved—addressing one major problem with the Kindle, which uses a location number to allow device-independent reading without the same bookmarks and placemarks. Without having common page numbers across devices, it's extremely difficult to use ebooks for research citations.
Since Amazon offers a Kindle application for the iPhone that will also work on the iPad, Amazon immediately has a huge library of books available for the new device. If Amazon swings this right, the company may see a large surge in purchases of books that are never read on Kindle hardware.
