Before Apple’s Ping Failure, There Was the iBookstore

I read books through iBooks app and buy through the iBooks Store. I’ve bought four books so far for myself. And just today, I was going to gift a book to a friend, I find out that I cannot do that.

Why, Apple? We can easily do that with apps in the app store so I don’t understand why this isn’t possible yet for ebooks.

That then led me to the larger issue about the success of iBooks. Rather, the lack of success that I am sensing from Apple.

I don’t hear analysts talking about Apple’s share in the ebook market anymore. Okay, I also don’t hear about Kindle’s share either. I think it’s probably because the Kindle is totally dominating iBook in terms of number of readers and books sold. And I reckon things probably go uglier after the Holidays despite Apple’s iPad outselling Kindles because readers can simply download the Kindle app and turn their iPad into a Kindle.

Being partial to Apple and its mobile vision, I hope that we will see some changes and improvements come to iBooks in 2011. For instance, let’s start with being able to gift books to another iPad or iOS device user.

I’ll come back to this subject once I’ve got more time to think about other things that Apple can do to improve sales and the reading experience.


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