Big Apple event to feature digital textbooks (Rumor)
On Wednesday Apple sent invitations to the media (including The Loop) to attend an event in New York City next week. The festivities will take place on Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 10:00 am ET at the Guggenheim Museum.
The invitation (above) depicts a chalkboard with an outline of the New York City skyline with a giant Apple logo smack-dab in the middle. The text at the bottom reads simply
Join us for an education announcement in the Big Apple.
The rumor mill is abuzz that the event will showcase Apple's foray into textbooks. Nick Wingfield writes for the New York Times that it will showcase a new push by Apple into the digital textbook business, but not feature any new hardware.
Talk of such a move by Apple has been bubbling since a biography of Apple’s late chief executive, Steve Jobs, came out in October. In that book by Walter Isaacson, Mr. Jobs told him that he wanted to transform the textbook market by hiring prominent textbook writers to create electronic versions of them for the iPad. Mr. Jobs told the author that he believed Apple could get around state certification processes for textbooks by making them free.
Makes perfect sense when you think of it.
Should traditional textbook publishers be worried?