What Steve Jobs actually said about iBooks market share

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There’s been a bit of controversy about what Steve Jobs said yesterday (video here) in regard to the market share of the new iBookstore. To recall, Apple opened a new front in the electronic book wars when it introduced iBooks alongside the iPad two months ago. iBooks, sold in a proprietary DRM-locked format only at Apple’s iBookstore, can be read only on iPads right now with an app for iPhones and iPod Touches coming soon. Here’s what Jobs’ said yesterday in San Francisco:

I’ve got a few stats today for you. In the first 65 days, users have downloaded over 5 million books and that is about two and  half books per iPad which is terrific. The other interesting thing is the five of the six biggest publishers in the US who have their books on the iBookstore tell us that the share of ebooks now that are going through the iBookstore now is about 22 percent. So iBooks market share now of ebooks from five of these six major publishers is up to 22 percent in just about 8 weeks. And, as we ship more iPads, that number is just going to keep going up and up and up and we’re really thrilled with it.

So, Jobs did properly limit his description of iBooks “market share” as being just about US sales of ebooks by the five big publishers participating in Apple’s offering. With one biggie opting out so far (Random House) and no global sales included, the 22% figure obviously wildly overstates Apple’s real market share in ebooks.

So why were some people confused? I’d say it’s all Apple’s fault. First for not streaming Jobs’ keynote live to everybody and, second, for including the slide pictured at the top of this post which simply says “Share of total eBook sales.” That’s not accurate.

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  • http://ipadtest.wordpress.com/ Mike Cane

    Eh, I said there was a bubble. It’s now popping. It would have anyway, but the iPad is speeding that up.

    Borders proposed “Area E” will be their downfall. They’ll wind up owing money to publishers *and* device makers. They want to stock an inventory of *ten* readers? First, did they ever bother to read “The Paradox of Choice”? Second, didn’t their own accountants warn them of those carrying costs?

    And the Agency Model will kill book sales. Uniform pricing everywhere is not what Americans are used too — despite the lack of discounts on Apple products.

    Kobo has a shot of staying in because they’ve been more aggressive than Sony internationally and have basically sewn up New Zealand and Australia, from what I’ve been reading. If Kindle had started out with ePub, it would have been all over for everyone a long time ago.

    This comment was originally posted on Dear Author: Reviews, Commentary and Industry News

  • http://dearauthor.com/ Jane

    @Mike Cane: I was thinking about the Kindle’s next move today. They can’t open up, can they? Wouldn’t it reduce their competitive advantage? Alternatively, I suppose they could use “epub” but wrap it with their own encryption scheme much like BN does.

    This comment was originally posted on Dear Author: Reviews, Commentary and Industry News

  • Ridley

    Can we stop pretending iBooks matters yet?

    Blackberry’s OS and Android OS are both outselling iOS.

    Apple is not going to own ebooks like they did mp3s. They got in the game too late and are shunning Verizon’s huge user network for their phones. Verizon, rather than any particular tech advantage, is driving the meteoric rise of Android OS.

    Kindle is now synonymous with ereading, like Zamboni and ice resurfacers no one not steeped in the industry knows other brands. That’s a tough thing to crack, and a $500 gadget locked into the universally reviled AT&T network isn’t going to do it.

    This comment was originally posted on Dear Author: Reviews, Commentary and Industry News

  • http://www.infogridpacific.com/igp/IGP:FLIP%20Portals/ Richard

    The 10 year prognosis is pretty optimistic. Think two years.

    Technology issues that are not “publisher” are moving so much faster. ePub is dead no matter how many meetings they have and how many upgrades because it is a vested interest standards group. Kindle has called it right here. The readers destroy the format so their 90s technology looks great alongside the ’10s technology. What an incredible situation.

    The winner is the one who gets to market, and as solid as ePub is, the implementations by Adobe and Apple are either technically bad or visually insulting and so retro they make ’90′s technology look cool. It can, and will be so much better. Very soon.

    This comment was originally posted on Dear Author: Reviews, Commentary and Industry News

  • http://moriahjovan.com/ Moriah Jovan

    As a now-full-time formatter, I don’t care what format wins. I do the most popular ones and when the fallout occurs, I can just stop doing the others. Yay.

    This comment was originally posted on Dear Author: Reviews, Commentary and Industry News

  • Brian

    IRex is getting help from the Dutch government so they might not be out of it yet. They of course had a different target market than other manufacturers and didn’t really try moving towards regular consumers until the 800 at which time they were probably already hurting.

    As for ‘declining sales’ I think some of those numbers have to do with Agency books not being available everywhere (Amazon etc.), heck some retailers still don’t have them from all five. Same with the iBooks 22%. Lots of sellers did 0% due to not having the books to sell so how helpful is that number really?

    This comment was originally posted on Dear Author: Reviews, Commentary and Industry News

  • Statch

    I just went in the opposite direction…from multipurpose device (iPod Touch) to dedicated ereader (Sony PRS-600). I still use the Touch but wanted to be able to read in direct sunlight. The iPad can’t do that, and it’s just too heavy for me to use regularly for reading.

    I think that if device prices keep coming down, there’s still a market for the dedicated device among people for whom ease of use is the key factor. My mother asked me the other day which ereader she should get. I won’t buy a Kindle for myself because I don’t want to be tethered to a store, and I’m comfortable handling different formats…but I would recommend it to her.

    Of course, in 10 years I’d expect that part of the market to be substantially smaller…

    This comment was originally posted on Dear Author: Reviews, Commentary and Industry News

  • Christine Carmichael

    In the UK, Tesco (a supermarket) Harlequin ebook sales rose 59% at Christmas due to people downloading ebook gift vouchers to their kindle and iphones. The age range was 19-35yrs and female. No sign, thus far, of numbers decreasing and many readers are downloading to their laptops and phones. The digital sales in this company are going through the roof worldwide.

    The best place to get the true numbers are from the market places that sell gift vouchers – you can see exactly where the money spent is going. Harlequin are also publishing their best selling author’s backlists.

    There is do doubt we are in the middle of a revolution. But I truly believe the reader will decide where we go and how much they are prepared to pay. It doesn’t take long for the word to go out to readers where the best deals are and what books are value for money. At the end of the day, the reading public will decide. The thing the publishing industry needs to tackle is the way the market changes instantly. Only a company who is nimble footed, customer focused, forward looking and aware will survive.

    This comment was originally posted on Dear Author: Reviews, Commentary and Industry News

  • eggs

    @Ridley, the iphone/ipad may be locked to one phone company in the USA, but in the ROW (rest of the world), it’s not. The kindle may continue to dominate the US market for ebooks for the reasons you describe, but ibooks will get the lion’s share of the ROW, a market that will be enormous once ibooks are available in all regions. Apple is advertising right now for people to manage these ibook markets. Once that happens, kindle will never catch up with them in ROW.

    This comment was originally posted on Dear Author: Reviews, Commentary and Industry News

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