On Thursday Apple will hold its first event of 2012. The event which will be held in New York City early on Thursday morning is guaranteed to be focused solely on the education market. Thankfully Apple clarified this intention with the actual event invite itself leaving no room for speculation on 50-inch Apple branded television sets or Apple TV boxes that can have Siri-type commands shouted at them.
Instead the little speculation that has led us up to this week has focused on the iPad and textbooks. When I say the iPad I don't mean a refresh of the iPad hardware, that's not likely to happen until April, I'm talking about how Apple will use the iPad to dominate the education market.
It's somewhat ironic that the biography of Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson contains a number of hints at future products and directions for Apple but the two that stick out are Jobs' mention of cracking the problem of TV interfaces and the education textbook market. Ever since the release of the biography the furore of rumours have surrounded the Apple TV or sometimes crazily referred to as the iTV.
I'll come back to these Apple TV rumours in another piece as we've reached the stage where the number of rumours and their detail is indicating some change in Apple's approach to the market. In the mean if you want to read something that seems like it was picked right out of my brain I suggest you have a read of Richard Gaywood's piece over at TUAW.
But for now let's focus on the upcoming event.
For those that haven't read the biography or skipped over this particular piece in Isaacson's book, here's the quote from page 509-510:
In fact Jobs had his sights set on textbooks as the next business he wanted to transform. He believes it as an $8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruction. He was also struck by the fact that many schools, for security reasons, don’t have lockers, so kids have to lug a heavy backpack around. “The iPad would solve that,” he said. His idea was to hire great textbook writers to create digital versions, and make them a feature of the iPad. In addition, he held meetings with the major publishers, such as Pearson Education, about partnering with Apple. “The process by which states certify textbooks is corrupt,” he said. “But if we can make the textbooks free, and they come with the iPad, then they don’t have to be certified. The crappy economy at the state level will last for a decade, and we can give them an opportunity to circumvent that whole process and save money.
The quote speaks for itself, to give it some context just before this particular extract Jobs had been having dinner with Rupert Murdoch who had also begun to focus on education. Based on my knowledge of Newscorp and some research I've done, it would appear that Murdoch's grasp on the massive textbook industry is limited and by the sounds of it he wants in.
Apple evidently wants into this industry too, whether the company has worked with Newscorp like it did with The Daily early last year or not is not known but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
It would appear that Apple is going to make use of its experience of creating great tools for publishers and developers and offering fantastic methods of distribution to revolutionise the textbook market. Chris Foresman over at Ars Technica writes that Apple has created a tool to help in the production of interactive eBooks (and presumably textbooks) or as Foresman puts it "the Garageband for eBooks".
Such a piece of software designed for the textbook industry is right up Apple's street. For many of the same reasons that eBook readers have become popular the iPad could easily become the de facto textbook reader in schools across the world.
Foresman's piece on Ars discusses the precise advantages that Apple has over many other companies who may wish to enter this particular market. Most notably Apple has experience of working closely with content partners to distribute their content, it does it with music, TV, books and movies to great success.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Apple 2.0 whilst mainly taking aim at the sensational headlines that have been formed following Foresman's post writes that a former Apple executive said that "This whole event is being blown out of proportion." PED notes that the goal of Apple's entrance into the textbook industry is to sell more iPads not to destroy the physical textbook industry.
So on Thursday we're guaranteed to hear about how Apple has partnered with the massive textbook companies like Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Wiley and Thomson to distribute their textbooks as brand new interactive editions via the iTunes store onto the iPad. Rather than using iBooks Apple will most likely have the textbooks as individual apps or into a folder that is reminiscent of Newsstand.
A number of critics of the idea suggest that these publishers will be unhappy with Apple's policy of taking a 30-percent cut but those who follow the industry have said that the inability to resell these new digital textbooks will easily cover the cost of distributing through Apple's platform.
Foresman also makes mention of a number of sources who suggested that Jobs had been working on this project for several years and a release was expected during Fall last year but was delayed for unknown reasons. Clayton Morris makes a similar sentiment adding that he had learned of the event last September.
A relatively unknown area of the iTunes Store is known as iTunes University. iTunes U already acts as an extensive distribution platform of lectures, audiobooks and language lessons amongst other things. I say relatively unknown but what I mean is relatively unknown to those who aren't in education, for those who are then the resource is incredibly helpful.
In Morris' post he mentions that Thursday's announcement will also involve iTunes U. I suspect that the platform will be the distribution method for textbooks and the content that already exists will be expanded although the majority of big name universities are already on board.
Thursday's announcement is likely to be of little interest to the average consumer and the excitement around the event already suggests that with no chance of a hardware announcement the interest is dimmed somewhat. However it shouldn't be underestimated in terms of the effect that this will have on the textbook industry. With some big publishers likely to be on board the pressure on schools, colleges and universities to buy iPads for students will increase exponentially. The benefits for Apple are obvious and this could very quickly become a big part of Apple's financial statements.
For textbook publishers it looks like they could also benefit, not only to their bottom lines but also in simplifying distribution methods and removing much of the bureaucracy that blights many curriculums across the US.
The event will kick off in New York City at 10am Eastern time (7am Pacific time or 3pm London) on January 19.