Are Kindle eBooks Outselling Apple iBooks?
by Joe White
August 23, 2010
Could it be that Kindle eBooks outsell Apple iBooks? A recent article by Cult of Mac suggests that this may be the case, following one author's comments on both platforms.
It seems, despite Kindle's colorless display and lack of video-playing capabilities (which prevents "enriched eBooks" from being loaded onto the device), people are still favoring Amazon's creation over Apple's. Here's what genre writer Joe Konrath said regarding the two platforms on his blog.
Apple is a very small part of the ebook market. I sell 200 ebooks a day on Kindle. On iPad, I sell 100 a month.Surprising, right? And, here I was, thinking Apple held the majority of the market. In fact, the figures for ebook readers are rather different from what I expected. Amazon's Kindle currently holds 40% of the ebooks market - while reading ebooks on computers is the second most popular choice. Perhaps the eReading public just haven't had chance to acquaint themselves with Apple's "magical and revolutionary" device. Or perhaps they don't want to, instead viewing the iPad as a touchscreen computer, as opposed to a multipurpose ebook reader. I'll admit: the iPad's screen, though glorious for playing movies and games on, isn't perfectly catered towards ebooks. In fact, it hurts my eyes - until I turn the brightness all the way down (however, then I can't see the text). Regardless, this begs the question: does Apple need to immerse itself further into the "enriched ebooks" market, in order to get ahead of Amazon's Kindle? We've all seen apps like Toy Story Read-Along - could this, or something similar, be the future of ebooks on the iPad? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments box below!
