Apple revealed that iBooks will allow for wireless syncing across devices, including purchased content and user-added content such as bookmarks, notes and highlighting. The wireless capabilities will be available free of charge for iBooks users on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.Note this useful analysis from the Nieman Journalism Lab's Joshua Benton:
[Steve Jobs also announced a new version of the iBooks app] due out later this month that will add new features that will let users highlight text, paste sticky notes, bookmark pages, and add bookmarks to the title's table of contents.
[Jobs said that the new iBooks would] add support for PDFs, a feature widely requested for its e-book platform. The new update will be available later this month, and will feature a separate bookshelf for users to view their PDF.
In the first 65 days [of the iBookstore], Jobs said users have downloaded more than 5 million books -- amounting to 2.5 eBooks for every iPad sold and giving Apple a near-instant 22% slice of the eBook market. Five of the six largest publishers in the world are on board with iBooks, releasing content for the Apple-supported format.
In the two months since the iPad launched — and with it Apple’s new ebook platform, iBooks — Apple has taken over a remarkable 22 percent of the ebook market. (That’s based on data from five of the six major publishing companies; the sixth, Random House, isn’t on the iPad.)In one sentence, Jobs revealed more hard data about ebook sales than Amazon has in 2.5 years of the Kindle. (I exaggerate, but only slightly. Amazon still hasn’t unveiled any hard numbers on Kindle device or ebook sales. Maybe this will prompt them.)
Those Apple ebook sales are based on the 2 million iPads sold, which are the only Apple devices that have iBooks. But iBooks is coming to the iPhone and iPod touch later this month — around the same time Jobs said the 100 millionth iPhone OS device will be sold. In other words, iBooks’ momentum is about to get punched up.
