iBookstore Coming to Japan in January

 

Apple has reportedly worked out deals with several large Japanese publishers to bring the iBookstore to Japan as early as this month. Apple is late to the party in Japan with Kobo, Amazon, and Google all having head starts, but with the market primed and ready for more ebooks, Apple has nothing to lose.

Sure their competitors have the jump on Apple, but Apple has a little extra something that their competitors don’t—market share of their devices:

Apple reportedly has 80 thousand titles lined up, all from local publishers. When combined with their dominance of the Japanese tablet market (iPad has a 60% market share), Apple will likely have a sizable advantage over the competition, one which is should be enough to help overcome the fact that Applr [sic] was beaten to the Japanese ebook market by Kobo, Google, and Amazon.

Sure I like Kobo and most of my ebooks are tied to that account and app, but when I could download and use iBooks in Canada I did. And since it was there I checked out some free books. Later I bought the Steve Jobs biography through iBooks…

You see the pattern here. Although I still prefer Kobo, I have over time started to use iBooks as well—sometimes even picked iBooks over Kobo for some titles—and this is exactly what Apple is betting on will happen in Japan.

And it’s a pretty safe bet at that.

Via: Digital Reader

Photo from Flickr by takako tominaga.