VIA: PCWorld.com
Not only will the Apple iPad compete with the Amazon Kindle as an e-reader, but because Apple’s new tablet will run iPhone apps, it will compete with Kindle’s software, too. People who buy the iPad can choose to use Apple’s new iBooks app and bookstore, or they could opt to run Kindle’s iPhone app on the device instead.
The decision might just come to down to the book stores. The iPad’s iBook store may be new, but the concept behind it is not; it’s not all that different from Amazon’s Kindle store for iPhone.
What’s interesting is that the Amazon Kindle book store will work on the iPad from day one, albeit only in 2x mode (pixel doubling to fill the larger screen). However, as the SDK for the iPad is out today, Amazon has plenty of time to prepare its store for the larger screen of the iPad over the next 60 days.
Books and magazines for the iPad
In theory, if you already own a Kindle (or ebooks purchased from Amazon) you will be able to enjoy them straight away on the iPad. But the best part of having two (three if you count Barnes & Noble in as well) book stores on the iPad will be diversity and choice. All of the apps are free to download; you pay only for the titles you want to buy, so there’s little to prevent users from switching between all three.
My colleague Nick Mediati was commenting last night how the iPad iBookstore is lacking periodicals. But then it struck me – it doesn’t matter if the iBookstore don’t have magazines, the Kindle store does.
Yet, what’s interesting about the iPad is that publishers don’t have to rely on book stores for distributing their static content. Instead, they can create their own full-fledged application from the App Store, like The New York Times does on the iPad.
