Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
A friend of mine with an ipad made the point that many ipad owners will have downloaded ibooks and bought something to try out the process - thereby inflating the initial figures. Also, it isn't clear whether free books are included in the "purchases". When Jobs quotes 5 billion downloads from the app store, I think that this includes both free apps and updates to existing apps; my point is that they, like most businesses, like quoting big numbers, but such statistics need treating with care.
In the long term, I'm sure that it's right that once screen and battery technology allow a general purpose tablet computer to work in sunlight, not get hot, last for weeks off one charge, etc. - and be reasonably cheap, then the purpose-built reader will not have a place any longer. The notion ink adam already looks like a step in this direction.
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The iPad/iPhone guide book/tips is also a popular download, which would be included in those sales figures. I do think people download a book just to see how it works but without the intention of using the device for reading