A little story that slipped through the cracks ocurred at the latest press conference orchestrated by cult favorite Steve Jobs. He gave out a ton of sales figures regarding ebooks and iTunes.
After music group “ColdPlay” performed, Apple announced on Sept 1, 2010 that they have confirmed statistics that iTunes users have downloaded over 35 million ebooks since April of this year. A fair portion of these books have been free books, such as open source ebooks and dictionaries.
Other sales figures included 11.7 billion song downloads, 450 million TV episodes, and 100 million movies.
Other notable occurrences at this event was the launch of their social media music service named Ping. Ping, available as a free download at itunes.com, allows users to view photos and videos of their favorite musicians and receive information about concert dates. Ping users can also connect with friends online to discuss albums and songs and make musical recommendations. “It’s sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes,” Apple’s Jobs said. In the first 48 hours, Ping had over 1 million users.
They also provided information on Apple TV, which is similar to the recently launched Google TV. Apple also announced changeups in their entire iPod line, including the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano and the iPod Touch.
For full details on the new iPod line click here, and for news on the new iteration of Apple TV click here.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
