Ten years ago no one even knew that we would all be turning to e-readers and tablets in order to keep up to date with worldwide news, reading books and browsing the internet.
But along came the digital publishing revolution. This involved the creation of the Apple iPad and Kindle, with other companies following suit not long after. This has enabled the online publishing sector to thrive with the introduction of the electronic newspaper and magazines. When Apple first launched the iPad it recorded a whopping 7 million sales in just 6 months.
(photo by Johan Larrson)
Is the Apple iPad the leader in this revolution?
Let us look at some of the history…
- 2007 saw the launch of the Amazon Kindle.
- 2010 saw the launch of the Apple iPad.
Amazon Kindle and netbook sales drop in 2010.
Although Kindle apps increased from 24% to 67% in 2012 for users and Android apps currently stand at 75%, Apple iPad is still the market leader by 87% of users using these compared to their digital counterparts. (Courtesy of: auditedmedia, 2012)
So, as it stands currently….
Apple iPad is in fact the current leader in this digital publishing revolution.
According to Distimo, which carried out research on this topic; the reason digital publishing companies are choosing iPad apps over any other is due to the fact that their apps are the ones that are bringing in the most revenue.
This could be down to the fact that users can still access apps even when they are not online as it has already been downloaded and is ready for use. Not forgetting that it is a lightweight portable device which enables remote working and provides users with the most number of apps compared to other tablets. (Courtesy of: Yudu media, 2012)
2012 saw the introduction of pay walls especially for newspapers which has resulted in increased profitability for these publishers by charging a small fee for access to their content. Readers of these publications are happy to pay to use this service as it means they no longer have the hassle of purchasing paper copies. Although not all publishers use this; at some point in the future it is expected that as the industry grows this will start to become the norm with all publishers as more and more people turn to tablets for their news.
Let us now look at some of the future predictions that have been made:
- 75% of the population would be online by 2012
- 760 million owners of tablets by 2016
(Courtesy of: Forrester Research. Hubspot)
According to Nielson Online in June 2012, 34.3% of the world’s population was online; with North America set at 78.6%, the only continent to meet this prediction.
As it currently stands in 2012, the US had 117 million tablet users; so it could well be that this future prediction will be met by 2016.
These are not the only reasons that we believe in e-publishing at PressPad. We do this because we belong to the generation of e-readers, and we want publishers and more readers to move on to the tablets