Will Apple change the Education market forever with iBooks?

Exactly a week ago, Apple made a revolutionary announcement around the textbook market for Education.  Apple formerly announced the launch of the iBook Author tool (http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/) and the iBooks 2 app for the iPad.  iBook Author allows textbook publishers to create interactive, rich, and dynamic educational content at ease and doing away with traditional books and the push to digital textbooks.  Publishers already creating digital textbooks for the iPad include Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw Hill, and Pearson Learning.  The iBooks also seamlessly work with and integrate into existing iTunes U services.

Some of the benefits of the iBook over the textbook include:

• iBooks will be at a fraction of the cost of a textbook
• Ability to get regularly updated and fresh content, instead of utilizing older textbooks with antiquated content
• Interactive graphics, demonstrations, and tools available in the iBook (3D images, Image galleries)
• You can add notes or highlight text on the iBook very easily
• Automation of study cards
• and much more!

Books that we all grew up on and learned from will not look anything like the digital iBooks.  Anyone can make books with the iBook Author application and it is free.

Well what does this mean to the Education world....a number of things.  The Education market is already struggling to pay and keep teachers, and budgets have been deeply cut for even the most basic needs (especially in K-12).  While this may free up resources spent on content (Roughly $16 billion was spent on Education content in 2011 according to Compass Intelligence), iBooks mean that students will need an iPad.  Will the iPad be subsidized, who will pay for the devices (the school, Apple, the publishers?).  Also, will this be part of the E-Rate program that is always being revamped?  

You also have to worry about the Higher Education segment, as it operates completely different than K-12.  Students usually purchase all their textbooks and even go to used stores to do that.  Today, college students are already buying digital books (for a number of years now) and they can be viewed on multiple devices, not just the iPAD.  So you also have to worry about the use of eReaders and tablets that are not iPads and there are other publisher partnerships already in place today with the likes of Amazon and others. 

There are some BIG gotchas on using the iBook Author software as a publisher, as it appears that Apple's agreement states that it will have ownership of the content that is created using the iBook Author app and it must be sold through Apple and Apple gets a 30% cut.  Many are concerned about this because it goes against the whole idea of "Open."  Publishers lose ownership rights and smaller publishers really get the short end of the stick.  But some smaller publishers may actually reap the rewards from the iBook Author tool mainly due to increased distribution and not having to find a formal publisher.  I guess it is all relative, but I am excited to see it all play out!

Written by Stephanie Atkinson

For more information on Compass Intelligence Education research, click here: http://www.compassintelligence.com/CompassIntelligenceSubscriptions/tabid/75/SubscriptionId/ED/Default.aspx

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