iPhone and e-Book users may be feeling a bit more liberated, following an announcement Monday that loosens the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provisions. Basically, the ruling means folks can legally disable the restrictive software controls on devices like Apple's iPhone or Amazon's Kindle.
Sony sells plenty of Readers worldwide, but it years ago gave up trying to market them in Japan. Now, just as Apple is about to launch its iPad there, Sony is defending its home turf with a new joint venture designed to solve the problem that stymied its previous e-book attempts: lack of content.
During a culinary barbecue escapade, Tom Ryder, now on the board of Amazon, gives his view on the coming shake-out in e-publishing and where the opportunities are for investors.
The online retail giant reported stellar earnings for the first quarter, but its outlook disappointed analysts. While Amazon will remain profitable for the remainder of 2010, it faces some pretty big challenges, from a saturated e-reader market to a growing state sales tax problem.
Apple announced that it sold approximately 300,000 iPads and that newly-minted iPad owners downloaded one million apps from its App Store and 250,000 e-books from its iBookstore on opening day. While these numbers sound suitably impressive, a closer look at the figures raises more questions than answers.
In a rush to woo publishers ahead of the launch of the iPad, Amazon is signing new agreements allowing them to charge higher prices for some books downloaded to Kindle e-readers. But not yet: Amazon has halted e-book sales from Hachette while it adjusts its system.
Amazon is once again trumpeting its 'big' Kindle and e-book sales, but it never releases the real data. And from the few clues available, it looks like those e-book sales numbers are nothing that Amazon should be bragging about.
