Apple Set To Dive Deeper Into The Digital Textbook Market
19 Januar 2012 - 5:38PM
Dow Jones News
Apple Inc. (AAPL) is expected Thursday to introduce tools that
would help build digital textbooks for devices like the iPad, the
latest push by the company to drive demand for its tablet and
change the education market.
"Education is deep in our DNA," said Philip Schiller, Apple's
senior vice president of world-wide marketing, at an event Thursday
at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Schiller noted that education
institutions already use more than 1.5 million iPads and have
access to more than 20,000 education apps.
At the event, Schiller unveiled iBooks 2, a new textbook
experience for iPad. "These are beautiful books. Interactive,
gorgeous, fun, engaging. Kids are really going to love to learn
with textbooks in iBooks."
Apple's push into textbooks is an attempt by the Cupertino,
Calif., electronics company to change the type of educational
content that exists on the market. It also underscores the
importance for tech companies to spur the creation of digital
content for their software or devices.
The digital textbook market is young but growing. Only about 6%
of education-textbook sales will be digital this year, up from 3%
in 2011, according to textbook distributor MBS Direct Digital, but
that number is expected to rise to more than 50% by 2020.
As a result, the market already is crowded but has been slow to
evolve. Companies like CourseSmart, Kno and Inkling offer tens of
thousands of digital textbook titles, with other publishers and
education companies working on digitizing content. In addition,
Kindle maker Amazon.com Inc. AMZN) has been pursuing the
market.
"Finally a mainstream company like Apple is turning its
attention to the huge problem of actually reinventing the book,"
said Matt MacInnis, chief executive of Inkling, in an interview
before the event. MacInnis, a former Apple employee, started
Inkling after noticing students considered technology and textbooks
to be rivals.
"By focusing everyone's attention on this issue, we're going to
hopefully reach a new understanding of what it means to be
digital," he added.
McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP), Pearson PLC (PSO, PSON.LN) and Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt are among the education-publishing companies most
likely affected by an Apple textbook announcement. The companies
have experimented with interactive approaches, such as allowing
students to take quizzes as they read and hear audio for
foreign-language study, but many digital textbooks have looked a
lot like their physical counterparts.
Apple already has made a push into book publishing, launching
its iBookstore. And the company has long been active in the
education market, with its products used in many classrooms and by
offering discounts to teachers and students. It also provides
lectures, lessons and other educational content through its iTunes
U.
While its existing education offerings have been niche, its
iBooks platform, which already contains a small number of
textbooks, could help it gain scale--if more schools are willing to
buy Apple devices.
Apple's textbook plans could spur more interest in the iPad,
which already is one of Apple's best-selling products. The company
currently dominates the tablet market--holding more than 70% market
share, according to tech research firm Gartner Inc.--but the iPad
is facing increasing competition from Google Inc. (GOOG) Android
devices and an eventual Windows 8 release from Microsoft Corp.
(MSFT).
The company's new initiative follows up on the ambitions of its
late co-founder, Steve Jobs, who had long aimed to reform education
with technology. More recently, Jobs had set his sights on the
textbook market, envisioning lowering the cost of textbooks by
distributing them on the iPad, according to people familiar with
the matter.
The event Thursday is the first hosted by the company since Jobs
died in October. Apple typically holds launches closer to home in
Silicon Valley, but New York is viewed as the hub for many major
publishers.
Apple shares, which earlier Thursday crossed $400 billion in
total market value for the first time, recently slid 10 cents to
$429.01.
-By Shara Tibken, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2189;
shara.tibken@dowjones.com
--Jessica E. Vascellaro contributed to this report.
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