Find Your Perfect Program:
Apple Breaks Into Digital Textbook Market
By Catherine Groux
Posted January 19, 2012 10:52 AM
For weeks, technology experts have been buzzing about Apple's scheduled January 19 announcement at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, speculating that the tech giant would announce its plans to enter the digital textbook industry. These rumors were recently confirmed when Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, took the stage at the invitation-only event and began his presentation by stating that the American education system needs improvement.
Schiller said that in order to do its part to ameliorate education deficiencies in the U.S., the company will start by "reinventing textbooks," the Toronto Star reports. The company announced the launch of iBooks2, which many professionals say will change the textbook industry forever.
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Apple recently announced that it will break into the digital textbook industry with iBooks2. new iBooks2 app will be free, and will attempt to make textbooks more interactive for students who use iPad tablets. This means that students will have easy access to glossary terms and interactive graphs and graphics. Additionally, users can highlight texts and create study cards directly on their tablets, Mercury News reports.
Schiller also mentioned that this is not the first time the company has made its mark on education. Today, more than 1.5 million iPads are used at academic institutions across the country, including colleges and universities. Additionally, students of all ages have access to more than 20,000 education applications, according to The Wall Street Journal.
While the announcement did not specifically mention textbooks on a postsecondary level, new apps and software could mean changes in the higher education sector in the near future.
In recent years, digital textbooks have held an important role in making course materials more affordable for students. In October 2010, citing data from the Association of American Publishers, Mashable reported that as sales of print books continued to decline, e-book sales rose by more than 192% in 2010. In that year, e-books accounted for 9% of all trade sales in the U.S., while they made up only 3.3% in 2009. For education specifically, digital materials will make up about 6% of all textbook sales this year, marking an increase from 3% in 2011, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Additionally, other studies have shown that many academic officials now consider digital textbooks to be an integral part of the future of higher education. According to an August 2011 poll by the Pew Research Center, almost two-thirds of college presidents believe that in the next decade, more than half of all textbooks used by students will be digital. However, the new announcement by Apple may mean students will go digital even sooner.
