Barnes & Noble eReader iPad App Coming In April, Pending Apple's Approval
March 11, 2010
Barnes & Noble has officially announced that the company intends to compete with Apple's own iBookstore app by releasing an iPad-optimized version of B&N eReader, an app that gives iPhone and iPod touch users access to all of the content available in the company's eBookstore.
We’ve been getting lots of questions from customers, so we wanted to confirm that we will soon be adding a new B&N eReader for iPad – continuing to fulfill our promise of providing consumers any book, any time, any where. Designed specifically for the iPad, our new B&N eReader will give our customers access to more than one million eBooks, magazines and newspapers in the Barnes & Noble eBookstore, as well as the existing content in their Barnes & Noble digital library. (That includes eBooks and content customers have downloaded to their nook™ eBook reader.)As many of you already know, Amazon also already offers an iPhone eReader similar to Barnes & Nobles', and you can be sure that they too are considering or have already started developing an iPad version. It will be interesting to see if Apple allows B&N eReader for the iPad, or any other third-party iPad eReader for that matter, into the App Store, especially since Apple's iBookstore is being offered as a downloadable app and won't actually be shipping with the iPad. It would probably be in Apple's best interest to allow third-party iPad eReader apps into the App Store, not only to save face, but also to provide multiple eReading options for future iPad owners.