Mobile Computing News

Photo: Apple

We wrote a story about Apple claiming iBooks accounted for 22 per cent of the eBooks market share during a recent Apple press conference. A reader took us to task for uneven reporting and, after internal discussion and further investigation, we’ve opted to revisit that post here.

Apple’s claim

Apple announced that in the two month period the iPad and its iBooks store was opened, Apple’s eBooks platform – which turns the tablet into a quasi e-reader – had sold 5 million titles to its 2 million plus iPad owners at an attach rate average 2.5 books per iPad owner. Apple claimed that this accounted for 22 per cent of the eBooks market.

Apple’s convenient omission

The truth, however, is that claim was, at best, conveniently incomplete or a gross oversight and, at worst, an out and out lie. Apple’s iBooks platform does account for 22 per cent of the eBooks market share of the five major publishers (and a few smaller ones) signed up with the company, which, of course, is not the whole market. This discounts one of the major publishers, Random House, and hundreds of midsize and smaller publishers, obviously depleting Apple’s total share of the iBooks market.

Some have speculated this depleted share of the whole market is only about 8-10%, but regardless of what the figure is, it is definitely less than the 22 per cent stated, making Apple’s claim wrong.

What stands, still

Photo: Apple

What does remain is the reality that Apple’s iBooks store, which didn’t even exist prior to April, is making major in-roads in the eBooks market, as well as threatening the existence of the stand alone e-reader. Amazon Kindle and the Kindle group should be concerned enough that their strategy moving forward should factor in the iPad’s impact on its business.

Thank you

So thank you to our readers for always taking us to task where they feel an issue or topic has not been explored fully. We have no biases here and simply want to report technology news as it is with some very reasoned judgements, too. We do think the iPad and the iBooks store is a major threat to the stand-alone e-reader and the Amazon Kindle platform in general. But Steve Jobs’ claim that it already accounts for 22 per cent of the whole market is plain wrong. Whether you want to put that down to human error (which we think it was) or believe he and his team were knowingly lying is up to you.