iPad

With the huge popularity of the iPad, not least as a book reading device, it seems that Apple are now looking to put the squeeze on their competitors by restricting eBook sales that don't go through their own store:

Buzz began Tuesday morning when The New York Times said that Sony’s e-reader app had been rejected, citing Apple’s restriction on in-app book purchases. This in itself was not a new policy — Apple doesn’t allow apps to sell content to users unless that content passes through the official Apple ecosystem, where Apple gets a 30 percent cut.

Apple also allegedly told Sony that the app couldn’t access content purchased on other Sony Reader devices, which is where most of the outrage was focused. Amazon’s Kindle app and Barnes & Noble’s Nook app are both popular mechanisms for users to download and read books that they have purchased from the respective stores. Many feared that this supposed change in Apple policy would take their e-books away from their iPads, iPhones and iPod touches.

Apple’s second statement indicates that this is indeed the case — sort of. If an app lets users access content that they purchased via Amazon’s website, for example, then that same app must also let users buy the same book via Apple’s own in-app purchase system. If the app developer doesn’t want to use Apple’s in-app purchases to sell content, then the app can’t access content purchased elsewhere either.

This is notable because it will require Amazon and Barnes & Noble (as well as Sony, whose iOS app is not yet available) to change how their offerings work. Apple wants its 30 percent share of content sales whenever possible.

Wonder if the new Android 3.0 tablets could put a dent in Apple's plans though, if they provide a more open system for users to access books?

Here's an interesting tutorial introducing the new Adobe Digital Labs workflow for creating iPad content using InDesign:

The tutorial shows how 'interactive' content such as videos and panoramas can be embedded within magazine apps and viewed on the iPad.

Amazon and Apple are under investigation by a US attorney general over the pricing of eBooks. Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal revealed late yesterday he was looking into agreements about the sale of e-books that "may block competitors from offering cheaper e-book prices", saying they "appear to deter certain publishers from offering discounts to Amazon and Apple’s competitors - because they must offer the same to Amazon and Apple". According to Blumenthal:

These agreements among publishers, Amazon and Apple appear to have already resulted in uniform prices for many of the most popular e-books - potentially depriving consumers of competitive prices.

The e-book market is set to explode - with analysts predicting that e-book readers will be among the holiday season’s biggest electronic gifts - warranting prompt review of the potential anti-consumer impacts.

Amazon and Apple combined will likely command the greatest share of the retail e-book market, allowing their most-favored-nation clauses to effectively set the floor prices for the most popular e-books. Such agreements - especially when offered to two of the largest e-book retail competitors in the United States - threaten to encourage coordinated pricing and discourage discounting.

Full story at The Bookseller.

Apple's debut of the iPad and iBookstore has been a successful one, with Steve Jobs announcing some impressive figures during his Worldwide Developers Conference keynote:

According to Jobs, users have downloaded more than 5 million books—approximately 2.5 for each device sold—in the first 65 days of iBooks’ availability. In addition, five of the six largest publishers have reported the app's share of their electronic sale to be about 22 percent, which is rather impressive for an e-book reader that has been on the market for just over two months.

That's quite a significant amount, given the short amount of time that the iPad has been available.