According the the Wall Street Journal Major textbook publishers have struck independent deals with software company ScrollMotion Inc. to adapt their textbooks for use with Apple’s iBooks on the upcoming iPad. The first of these to appear will be in the form of test-prep and study guides.
“People have been talking about the impact of technology on education for 25 years. It feels like it is really going to happen in 2010,” said Rik Kranenburg, group president of higher education for the education unit of McGraw-Hill Cos. and one of the publishers involved in the project.
Interesting enough Apple didn’t mention it’s educational ambitions during its unveiling of the device last week, but those familiar with Apple’s thinking have said that one of Apples key focal points when developing the iPad’s was to figure out a way to re-invent text books. Apple already has an edge in the education sector with their strong following in schools and universities.
Other publishers inking deals are Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, which is a unit of Education Media &- Publishing Group Ltd.- Pearson PLC’s Pearson Education, and Washington Post Co.’s Kaplan Inc., known for its test-prep and study guides.
If these textbooks are iPad-specific, is this going to significantly hurt amazon’s ability to sell textbooks on Kindle? Perhaps publishers will seek to make versions for all the popular devices.
Text books on an ipad would definately help with sales of the device. Just as long as pricing of the text books is realistic as at this point in time you can’t re-sell electronic text books once you have finished with them.