Apple sees over 350K digital textbook downloads, report says

Apple’s venture into digital textbooks is apparently already proving successful, according to a recent report from Global Equities Research.

Last week, the company launched a new version of its iBooks iOS application for the iPhone and iPad, which will offer highly interactive electronic textbooks, as well as a new textbook section in the iBookstore. It also debuted iBooks Author, which is a way for teachers to create their own textbooks.

In the first three days since launching the new iBook initiatives, the report indicates that over 350,000 textbooks were downloaded from Apple’s iBookstore, and more than 90,000 downloads of the iBooks Author tool.

“Our research indicates that Apple has a very strong following with Authors, Publishers, Faculty and Students and may capture 95% of Digital Textbook Market, while Amazon.com may only participate in the 5% of the market,” Analyst Trip Chowdhry wrote in the Global Equities Research report.

Apple isn’t the only company with the potential to earn a great profit in the textbook market. The report also indicates that textbook publishers can save up to 35 percent of the production costs by selling their books through Apple. Also worth noting is that individual textbook prices are thought to be much less expensive than printed copies, which means people could be purchasing more of them.

Regardless of how accurate the information in the report is, it seems very likely that Apple will have an impact in the digital textbook market for years to come.

[via IBtimes]