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E-Textbooks – Apple’s Next Big Venture

E-Textbooks - Apple's Next Big VentureAs if Apple doesn’t already own enough of the market share, add textbooks to the mix and they will surely gobble up a few more hundreds of millions of dollars. Apple’s latest money making venture e-textbooks has received mixed reviews.

The textbook companies are all for it, because it seems as though every time Apple puts their name on something, it gains nationwide attention. Companies say that with this release and an ipod application possibilities for both students and non-students could become endless.

Digital enhancements could include interactivity, multimedia, and personalized content.

Even though e-textbooks already exist, this type of production from ibooks could allow for updates to take place, making e-textbooks user friendly and more compatible with the existing and new applications.

Existing e-textbook companies such as Chegg, Kno, or Inkling don’t seem to be letting on any possible worry of competition. It may be because these already existing companies target higher-education while Apple’s first e-textbooks would likely be marketed to K-12 students.

Unfortunately for Apple, the snag that is currently causing the biggest issues is the fight to get ipods and ipads into the classrooms, which would come at a significant cost for school systems.

Content publishers are also concerned with making their books available on a number of platforms which ibooks would not allow.

E-textbook supplier Chugg comments that “his company uses HTML5 for its e-textbooks, which allows it to use a variety of authoring tools. HTML5 also supports a range of multimedia features, which are then viewable on a variety of devices. You can’t say the same thing about the iBooks format introduced Thursday, which is limited to the iPad.”

Acceptance on a wide range of platforms in necessary to make e-textbooks a success says Chugg CEO Rosenweig.

It will be interesting to see how ipod users and Apple themselves react to this idea of sharing.

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