Earlier this week at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Steve Jobs said that the iBooks platform for the iPad has captured 22 percent of the e-book market. However, a posting on the Bits Blog points out that this number does not reflect the entire publishing industry because Random House does not sell e-books through Apple. Steve Jobs also said that iPad owners have downloaded over five million books in the last two months which equals about 2.5 books per iPad. Whether or not Apple has captured exactly 22 percent of the market, it is selling a lot of e-books for the iPad.
A posting on Allen Weiner’s blog notes that these stats show that readers are ok with reading e-books on a backlit LCD screen. At this point consumers seem to appreciate multi-function reading devices, even if it means a less optimal reading experience than single purpose E Ink devices can provide.
Also at the WWDC, Jobs announced that the iBooks app will be available for the iPhone and readers will be able to synchronize their books between devices. In addition, new features will be added to the iPad including a PDF viewer, book marking functionality, and note-taking capabilities.
