Though a minor piece of Monday’s Apple news through most lenses, the company has finally gotten serious about making the iBookstore easily accessible to the tens of millions of users on the iOS platform. The iBookstore is now incorporated directly into iTunes, alongside music, movies, TV shows, apps and other major elements. And Apple is promoting the inclusion on the iTunes home page. At Monday’s WWDC presentation, Apple also updated their tabulation of ebooks downloaded worldwide through the iBookstore. In March they were still saying 100 million downloads; now they are saying 130 million.
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iBookstore Up to 130 Million Downloads
Apple still hasn’t said a word about sales of ebooks, but they have revised their tabulation of ebooks downloaded worldwide. In March they were still saying 100 million downloads; now they are saying 130 million.
eNews: Stats on Google, Kobo and James Patterson; Borders Transitions; Unbound’s Deal; and More
Making the rounds electronically now (we missed it when posted a week ago), Google eBooks said their apps for iOS, Android and Chrome “have exceeded 2.5 million” installs since December. In contrast, Kobo said in early May they were “close to 4 million users” with adoption accelerating. (They went from 2 million users to 3 million in somewhere between 60 and 90 days.) Google There are varying degrees of consternation online based on whether or not people were paying attention previously, but as announced, Borders is transitioning their branded ebook line–which was already powered by Kobo–over to the Kobo brand. […]
eNews: 3M Invests in txtr; Diesel Allies with E-Reads; More From Eisler
Further underscoring 3M’s commitment to the epublishing space, following of our pre-BEA report of their ambitious new library ebook initiative, the company formally announced an investment in Germany’s txtr. The ereading software company’s ceo Christophe Maire calls it a “considerable investment” and says it “demonstrates that 3M has recognized the growing importance of the eReading market.” He notes that txtr is already a vendor for 3m: “we provide a white label solution to 3M, which will allow them to open up new vertical markets.” Like many others in the space, txtr at one time planned their own reading device, which […]
Google Book Engineer Says His Staff Has Grown 50 Percent
Chief Engineer for Google Books James Crawford didn’t reveal much news at his presentation Thursday morning on Seven Years of Google Book Search, but he did mention–in contrast to unsourced allegations on the interwebs recently–that he has grown the engineering team by 50 percent since Google eBooks launched in December. Google has big international hopes that most ebooks they add from around the world will be available worldwide with limited rights issues in most territories (presumably excluding English and Spanish), and Crawford pointed to cases where “the contracts between the authors and publishers are silent or ambiguous on digital rights” as […]
eNews: BN Seeks Trademark for A “Simple Touch Reader” (And 1 Million Nook Apps); NYPL iPad Apps; and More
With Barnes & Noble‘s new ereader announcement set for 10:00 on Tuesday, May 24, CNet has researched some of the company’s recent trademark filings (which are made through Fission LLC) for clues. They filed to protect the phrase “the simple touch reader” at the end of March in the category of “portable electronic apparatus for reading”–which CNet logically says “we take as a strong indication that the upcoming Nook will be an affordable monochrome e-ink touch-screen model that operates similarly” to the Sony Reader. A more recent filing also seeks to protect MyNook, a web portal service “to remotely manage, […]