iPad

Here is a quick summary of a short but good interview (published back in January) with Paul Grim (GP at VC SunBridge) – the questions/answers revolved mostly around business impacts of the iPad release:

• The installed base of iPhone/iPod users will naturally migrate to this platform
• I don’t think this will significantly impact the Kindle’s prospects, but I do think it bifurcates the e-reader market.
• This is another giant leap toward the new human-machine interface paradigm.
• There are some obvious vertical segments that could be completely dominated by the iPad: healthcare, education, design, architecture, basically any field in which someone carries around a clipboard or simply has to move around a lot while working.

Paul blogs at GrimTimes.com

Amazon, the leading online books merchant is trailing behind Barnes&Noble on this one. Amazon will be releasing a Kindle app for iPad that will let you read your precious digital books and keep progress and notes in sync. Here is Amazon’s tag line:

Tablet computers, including the iPad, are coming and with our free app you’ll be able to read more than 450,000* Kindle books. Like all Kindle apps, Kindle for tablet computers will include Whispersync technology, which automatically synchronizes y9our last page read, bookmarks, notes and highlights across your Kindle and Kindle compatible devices including PC, Mac, iPhone and BlackBerry. *If you are a non-U.S. customer, book availability may vary.

See the announcement on Amazon’s Kindle page here!

Interesting…

You can either go left (Kindle) or right (iPad) – pick your route…

I’d love to hear Kindle folks here – I do not own one but looking at the thing I just have to say that it looks a bit, well, boring…

BusinessWeek has a good article on future of eBook for Apple platforms and in general (link below). Here is the blurb on iPad vs Kindle positioning:

The popularity of book-related apps on Apple devices may be especially disruptive for existing makers of e-readers. While sales of standalone e-readers may double to 5 million units in 2010, they may rise only 30% next year, in part because of the iPad’s introduction, says Susan Kevorkian, a program director at consultant IDC. “Content providers have a much richer platform on the iPad” than on the Kindle, says Charlie Wolf, senior analyst at Needham & Co.

As far as the impact on Apple’s bottom line it’s amazing to find out that eBooks are largest content category in the App store – here is the excerpt from the article:

…electronic books are now the largest content category at the App Store, which features apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and forthcoming iPad, a tablet-style computer due to go on sale Apr. 3. The store boasts 26,976 e-books, compared with 25,330 games, Mobclix says. The surge in popularity is a boon for book publishers as well as software developers such as Oceanhouse.

(emphasis added)

Read the full article here: BusinessWeek on iPad/ebooks

My quick take on the looming war between iPad and Kindle: given the specs and demoed GUI iPad will destroy kindle in every sense. The fact that five biggest book publishers (Hachette, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Penguin Group) are on board with iPad Amazon simply cannot compete provided their current hardware offering remains as it is (or incrementally improved).

Amazon senses the danger and they already increased the royalty cut for the publishers to 70% (70 percent of list price net of delivery cost) [as of 1/20/10].

Amazon states that authors get 7-15% of the list price for paper books and 25% of net for digital books. Needless to say, the 70% royalty looks like a good deal (it’s not as simple as this as Amazon requires that the price is below 10 bucks and that the digital offering includes bells and whistles like txt-to-spch)

70% cut sounds familiar? Yep, Apple pays 70% royalty to iPhone/iPad developers for apps sold via iTunes. Competition and market-forces at work? I don’t see anything else that would be a feasible explanation for Amazon’s gracious increase in publishers’ royalty from 50% to 70%.

Let the thousand flowers bloom…

PS

Check out the Delicious Library (DL) – former DL employees (Mike Matas, Lucas Newman, Tim Omernick) are some of the folks that helped with the iBooks’ overall design/look