Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
Another important milestone was the introduction of the iPhone and later, the iPad. Who foresaw the rise of iOS as an important ereading platform? Not Steve Jobs-another bonafide business genius-who initially dismissed ebooks as unimportant. It was third party developers who saw that iPhone and other smartphone owners would want to read ebooks on a device that was always with them, and they prompted Amazon, who originally wasuninintersted in developing smartphone apps, into introducing iOS and Andriod apps, with other bookstores soon following Amazon. Steve Jobs realized his mistake and decided to make a bookstore part of his new offering, the iPad, presenting the publishers with an opportunity and a problem-he wanted the agency distribution model. And here we are.
Now could the publishers have foreseen all of this? I don't see how. Nobody else did.Could they have reacted better? That we can argue.
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FFS. It might not have been a Kindle or a Kobo but I was reading ebooks on a Palm Zire71 in 2003. It might not have been a game changer at the time, but it certainly should have been an indication to someone whose livelihood depended on predicting the future of his industry. That is if they even knew what a Zire71 was.