Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
The key is that Apple is fundamentally a hardware company; selling ebooks and other digital content is primarily (though not exclusively) a means to drive iPad / iPhone / iPod sales. IMO they're not that concerned with selling ebooks; it's just a convenient "hey, look at this cool thing we can do with our snazzy hardware" approach. In contrast, selling music was the whole reason for the original iTunes Music Store, so at that time price was far more critical.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pardoz
With no content, your hardware is just a paperweight, and if you sell somebody the hardware you've probably got them as a customer for content. Apple saw that synergy with music but dropped the ball completely on books. Amazon picked it up and ran with it, and now Apple's moving to intercept before they get completely shut out of the game.
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I am going to go with Kali Yuga's logic on this one.
The difference with the iPad is that it is not strictly a situation of 'no content'. Apple could just release the iPad and go with the Kobobooks Reader or the B&N Reader or the Stanza Reader for those who are knowledgeable.
iBooks exists, in my opinion, to offer one-stop-shopping, a 'smooth purchase process'. eBook formats and DRM are a complete mess right now and Apple recognizes what Amazon has done to smooth out the kinks for its own customers. In fact it could be argued iBooks exists to lower costs to Apple's iPad Customer Service Department - because without iBooks Apple was looking at having to foot the bill for educating the public on how to load eBooks onto their iPads using a process that Apple did not control.
Now all Apple has to do is create a web page of instructions for how to purchase with iBooks and tell the customer to wait for their favorite novel to come out on iBooks, not explain how to get the customer's favorite eNovel over at Sony onto their iPad.