Apple Reported to Become Much Bigger Player in e-Textbook Market
With the explosion in popularity of Apple’s iPad, it only makes sense that Apple would add to the e-textbooks offerings available for the tablet device. While Apple has sold numerous iPads to elementary and high schools since they debuted in 2010, the educational materials available for them have been limited. According to an article appearing on Bloomberg.com by Adam Satariano and Peter Burrows, insiders requesting anonymity until a formal announcement is made later today, said that Apple will ” . . . announce a set of tools that make it easier to publish interactive textbooks and other digital educational content.”
Although e-textbooks made so much sense, as they are much cheaper and do not require the cutting down of trees in their production, they have been relatively slow to catch on, and only represent a very small portion of the $10 billion textbook industry. But since the iPad has become so popular, Apple’s move into the e-textbook market should not be surprising to anyone.
Satariano and Burrows wrote:
The plans, to be unveiled by Apple Internet software chief Eddy Cue, are aimed at broadening the educational materials available for the iPad, especially for students in kindergarten to 12th grade, the people said. By setting its sights on the $10 billion-a-year textbook industry, Apple is using the tablet to encourage students to shun costly tomes that weigh down backpacks in favor of less-expensive, interactive digital books that can be updated anywhere via the Web.
“Apple will raise a lot of awareness about digital textbooks and how education is going digital,” said Osman Rashid, whose company, Kno Inc., develops e-textbook software.
Apple’s new software is designed for a broad range of authors to be able to publish the content in a digital format, similar to what Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) does with its direct publishing tools, said the people. Large publishers will be able to create digital versions of textbooks, with embedded graphics and video.
e-Textbooks Still a Hard Sell in the College Market
Despite all of the advantages of e-textbooks, they can be a tough sell to college students. According to Satariano and Burrows, e-textbooks for college courses only comprised a tiny 2.8% share of the $10 billion textbook market in 2010. With plans to make e-textbooks more interactive, with features such as 3-D diagrams, pronunciation guides and interactive quizzes, look for e-textbooks to make significant inroads into this market in the near future.
Apple’s foray into the market could change the entire landscape of what we typically imagine a textbook to be. The jury is still out on whether or not students will embrace the change.
Read more about Apple’s big push into the textbook market with $14.99 high school textbooks.