iBooks

Apple’s iBooks app was my default reading platform until I got a Kindle device. Amazon’s selection, Whispernet technology, and the ability to read my books on just about any device I owned moved me to that platform. Now iBooks uses your iTunes account to sync notes and reading position, and the selection for new releases seems to match Amazon’s new releases. What I had forgotten was just how good books in iBooks look. When reading the sample chapter of Michael Connelly’s The Drop via iBooks I noticed the typography overall was crisper and the design markedly different from the Kindle app. Even side-loaded books looked better, probably due to different fonts in the iBooks app.

I also noticed an improvement in the rendering of PDFs compared to the original iPad. Assuming the PDF is of a high-enough resolution, the text and photos will be much clearer on the new iPad thanks to the display. The one thing I’ve always enjoyed about the iBooks app is how well it manages ePub and PDF files.

The problem I’ve noticed with iBooks, however, is it seems to take a very long time to open — about 13 seconds. I’m not sure if it’s because of the size of my library or just the app itself.

Amazon Kindle app

While the iBooks app looks better, the Kindle app still looks great on the Retina display.  Even if you’ve blown the text up to the largest font size available, the text is very clear with no discernible anti-aliasing.  The latest version of the app has an interface that is similar to the Kindle Fire app with tabs along the top for Books, Newsstand and Personal Documents. As an aside, I’ve always enjoyed how seamless Amazon’s Personal Documents makes reading side-loaded books. I hope someday Apple will let iBooks readers store side-loaded ePubs in iCloud.

While I was previously critical of how Newsstand items rendered in the Kindle app, I did notice  a very slight improvement with the new iPad. The text is still slightly too heavy for my tastes and it varies from magazine to magazine. The pages do load smoothly, however, and I did not detect any focusing issues.

Zinio

Zinio has the toughest load to bear with the Retina display. Delivering quality text on a Retina display, even if you use your own API, isn’t that taxing — displaying 50-plus pages that are graphics is, however. Therefore, it didn’t surprise me that Zinio had the worst growing pains. The version of the app available when the new iPad launched had issues where the pages would slowly load as tiles. The first release of the updated app showed a marginal improvement. The app that is now available (version 2.2.2 — check your updates, it launched almost immediately after 2.2.1) is a big improvement. The only time I notice the tiling effect is if the magazine is still being downloaded. While the focusing still isn’t instantaneous, it’s not any worse than usual.

I’m a guitar player, so the litmus test for me is how easily I can read the tablature in a magazine. On the iPad 2, I still had to zoom in to make out the small numbers. On the new iPad, it’s much clearer minimizing the need to zoom in. I have also noticed an improved sharpness in my photography magazines, especially with National Geographic.

Comixology

The iPad really got me back into reading comics, and Comixology quickly became my go-to source for digital comics. The new iPad really makes this a fantastic reading experience. With older iPads, the text would be fuzzy enough to force me to use the pane-by-pane view. With the new iPad, I don’t need to. While the issues look great as they are, Comixology is stepping up their game by updating (for free) most of their library to what they call CMX HD.  At the time of publishing, roughly 1,000 titles have been upgraded. When you are shopping for comics it will say CMX HD in the lower right hand corner of the page if it is available in HD. This was the app I was most looking forward to on the new iPad, and it has not disappointed me at all.

Newsstand

This is somewhat of a mess. Updating apps for the Retina displays really drives home for me how discombobulated the entire Newsstand experience is. At the time of publishing, few Newsstand apps from my library have been updated. Non-updated Newsstand apps have a noticeable focusing issue where the page takes several seconds to load, and it focuses in annoying tiles.

Overall, I’m very pleased with most of these apps, especially iBooks and Comixology, and how they’ve adapted to the new display on the iPad. I’m hopeful that having to deal with delivering large files will change how Zinio and Newsstand issues are delivered, ideally by using the text APIs to make the text even clearer and the files smaller.

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Seventy-four percent of survey respondents said they were “Very Satisfied” with the iPad in an earlier November survey, while only 54 percent said they were “Very Satisfied” with the Kindle Fire in the January survey. The average of Very Satisfied customers for all other tablet devices combined was 49 percent. Why the 20-point gap between the iPad and Fire? It came down to what many users seemed to feel were missing features, according to ChangeWave.

The major dislikes that survey respondents listed for the Kindle Fire included the lack of a hardware volume button, the absence of a camera, short battery life, a lack of cellular connectivity and the size of the Fire’s app library. Cost and screen were favorite features among Kindle Fire owners.

Apple’s focus on user experience seems clearly to be better at winning the admiration of users post-purchase, while Amazon’s focus on offering a low-cost device seems to ultimately leave customers feeling like there’s something missing. That strategy appears to have worked well in the short term. One analyst said earlier this week that Amazon may have shipped as many as 6 million Fires during the last quarter of 2011. But long-term, Apple may have been right when it suggested in December that strong Kindle tablet sales might eventually help boost iPad demand.

Consider that the features tablet users indicated a desire for in expressing their dissatisfaction with the Kindle Fire are all features the iPad currently offers; there’s a clear path of where to get what they want out of a tablet already in place. And if Apple does decide to keep the iPad 2 around as a lower-cost offering when it unveils the iPad 3, the Fire’s No. 1 selling feature won’t seem nearly as much of a marked advantage.

On the flip side, Amazon could also address those deficiencies in future iterations of the Kindle Fire, should it find cost-effective ways of doing so. But Apple will continue to push the experiential envelope at the same time, and so far whatever it provides seems to set the standard in terms of tablet buyer expectations. Pleased customers are loyal customers — as ChangeWave says, it’s found that satisfaction is highly linked to future sales, so Apple’s big lead here is definitely a key measure of success.

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With Apple’s more than 15 million iPads shipped during the quarter, the worldwide PC market grew 16 percent year over year. Not counting tablets, of which the iPad is easily the most successful, the PC market actually shrank by 0.4 percent worldwide when compared to the same period a year ago, according to the Canalys data.

Apple’s success both with the iPad and its Mac computers allowed it to take top honors for the quarter, knocking HP to second place overall. Canalys says the lack of a valid HP tablet competitor, now that the TouchPad is shelved, will mean that HP will continue to struggle against Apple’s success.

The iPad wasn’t the only tablet to do well during the quarter, however. Canalys says that the Amazon Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet also helped contribute to the success of tablets in the U.S. Amazon ranked as the second strongest tablet manufacturer worldwide, while Barnes & Noble took the fourth place spot.

All told, iPads accounted for 22 percent of all worldwide PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2011, as measured by Canalys. It’ll be interesting to see what effect a new iPad launch in the coming months might have on the worldwide momentum of tablets, and the larger PC industry.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook said during his company’s recent earnings call that iPad sales haven’t really been affected by the Amazon Kindle Fire, which is no doubt contributing heavily to the success of Android tablets. It’s also likely the Barnes & Noble Nook Color and Nook Tablet are included in the Android figures. Instead, Cook admitted the iPad has had some cannibalization effect on sales of Macs, and he predicted that one day, the tablet market will be larger in volume than the PC market.

Compared to Android, Apple still has a dominant position in the tablet market, with a 57.6-percent share compared to Android’s 39.1 percent, according to Strategy Analytics’ most recent numbers. In terms of year-over-year growth, the tablet space has grown by 150 percent between the end of 2010 and 2011. In other words, even if shares were more evenly split, the iPad would still be seeing big gains in unit sales.

The PC market, on the other hand, contracted by around six percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to research firm Gartner. That’s despite 20 percent growth by Apple’s own Mac line of computers. Kevin Tofel recently pointed out here on GigaOM that half of computing device sales are now mobile. If the trend of growing tablet and smartphone sales continue, and PC sales continue to decline, we’ll soon be in a position where mobiles are considered a primary device by the majority of users.

Apple will continue to sell iPads. A new refresh expected in the coming months might even help it turn the tide of slipping market share, since while the low-cost Kindle Fire may be a success, other Android tablet makers still seem to be having a hard time putting out a product consumers can get genuinely excited about. Kevin wrote last week about how Android 4.0, while it improves the Android tablet experience, still has a lot of glaring pain points. Also, Android’s tablet-specific app library lags considerably behind Apple’s, and isn’t catching up anywhere near as fast as the market on the smartphone side.

The companies putting out Android tablets that fail to achieve the Kindle Fire’s level of success are the same ones being hurt by the slowing PC market, and they’re the ones that stand to lose the most. Amazon’s Kindle fire has reportedly sold as many as 6 million units through the end of 2011, according to estimates, which would make it the world’s best-selling Android tablet.

Apple continues to appeal to a steadily growing audience of tablet users, but Amazon is answering the call of those who were happier buying bargain-priced netbooks for their basic computing needs, rather than spending more on an iPad. That’s the market PC makers should have been trying to retain with their own tablet efforts, and also the one Amazon has positioned itself best to appeal to.

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Here’s why Wu says he thinks the iPad will continue to be a hot-seller in 2012:

We believe this significant refresh will likely help drive higher iPad sales and help further differentiate from arguably the only real competitor in the market, Amazon’s Kindle Fire, and not to mention the myriad of Android offerings out there. We are currently modeling 48 million iPad shipments for calendar 2012.

DisplaySearch has already said it estimates 48 million iPad display panels were shipped in 2011. Now, display shipments doesn’t necessarily equal iPad shipments (owing to repairs, replacements, defective stock, etc.) but Apple’s own reported numbers put its iPad sales for its financial year in 2011 at around 32.4 million. An increase of 16 million would certainly be in line with the iPad’s sales growth between 2010, when it sold 14.8 million worldwide, and 2011, but if Apple’s quarterly sales continue to gain steam the way they did in 2011, we could indeed see much bigger increases, especially if the iPad 2 remains available as a low-cost option.

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Between 2010 — when the iPad was introduced — and 2011, Apple iPad shipments soared from 17 million to the estimated 48 million mentioned above. That’s an increase of 182 percent, but the situation was completely different: Apple’s iPad was introduced three months into 2010, and the market was almost completely untested. By the end of the year, it was pretty clear the iPad was here to stay, so consumers felt confident this wasn’t just a fad.

In 2012, Apple faces competition from low-cost devices like the Amazon’s Kindle Fire. That alone probably won’t be enough to take the winds out of its sails, but it could stop Apple from having another year ruling the tablet landscape without a credible competitor in sight.

Projected growth of 35 percent is also just that: projected. Back in late 2010, Wall Street predicted Apple would sell 28 million iPads in 2011 (though later estimates offered more realistic estimates). Apple still has a new iPad to unveil this year, which could boast QXGA 2,048 x 1,536 resolution screens, which DisplaySearch believes will likely be provided by LG, Samsung and Sharp. It’s hard to predict what demand for a Retina Display iPad will be, and how keeping an iPad 2 on the shelves as a lower-cost option might affect shipment volume, should that rumor turn out to be true.

Plus, even if Apple just meets the 65-million mark predicted by DisplaySearch, that will still represent a volume just 30 million shy of 2011′s worldwide PC shipments from all manufacturers combined.

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If you checked out my hands-on of the Kindle Cloud Reader back in August, you’ll already have a good idea of how the touch-optimized store works: You can browse recommendations and categories via a smooth scrolling highlights section with full cover pics, or check out best-seller lists. Big, finger-friendly buttons abound, making it much easier to browse and buy. In general, it’s far superior to using Amazon’s standard site.

Now that the store is broken out on its own, you can add it to your home screen for easy access, and also all books now offer the option to read samples and full purchased versions directly from your native Kindle app instantly. You can also still opt to read in the Kindle Cloud Reader web app, if you prefer.

I liked my initial experience with the Cloud Reader, but it wasn’t compelling enough to get me to abandon the native Kindle app. Now, the new optimized store site means it’ll be even easier for me to check out new content on my iPad, all while using my reading method of choice. This is a smart move for Amazon, which is clearly still seeing the value in keeping an up-to-date native offering available for iOS device owners, as it proved with its substantial update to the iPad app in December. Considering apps seem to be gaining momentum on mobile devices as compared to the web, that’s not surprising.

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After an initial report from AllThingsD introduced the possibility of the event, while also stressing that nothing fun like the iPad 3 or an Apple iTV would be discussed, TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis says the site confirmed with its own source that the subject at the NYC event will be publishing and e-books. Considering reports indicate Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue will be prominently involved, it’s a focus area that makes a lot of sense.

Cue is in charge of the iBookstore, as well as the iTunes and App Stores, iAd and iCloud. He’s the one who took the stage the last time Apple had a publishing-specific event, when it unveiled News Corp.’s The Daily. Apple used the opportunity to highlight the introduction of in-app subscriptions, which allowed publishers to provide digital subscriptions on a recurring basis for their in-app periodical content, in exchange for a 30-percent cut of revenue for Apple.

Despite The Daily‘s lukewarm reception, in-app subscriptions have definitely been a hit for Apple and publishers alike. Condé Nast reported its subscriptions skyrocketed following the feature’s introduction, and more recently, Popular Science revealed a healthy growth spurt once it switched to using in-app subs.

But that early success is about to face its first big challenge, now that Amazon is essentially launching a full-court press with its own digital periodical offerings alongside the introduction of the Kindle Fire. Recently, Amazon updated its iOS app to be able to access the same digital magazine subscriptions it offers for its new Android-based tablet, giving them the cross-platform appeal that keeps the Kindle bookstore out ahead of Apple’s own iBookstore.

Apple could be taking steps to arm itself against this effort from Amazon with improvements to its publishing platform, and one such improvement could be opening up a new digital self-publishing platform, according to sources talking to Good e-Reader. That would allow Apple to compete with similar offerings from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, providing Apple the ability to negotiate directly with independent authors for exclusive publishing rights. If Apple can convince some big names to go iOS-only, it might provide a kick in the pants for iBooks’ lackluster sales performance thus far.

Apple’s publishing efforts, and iBooks in particular, are in need of some invigoration in the face of the competition. A targeted media event in January would be a good way for Apple to call attention to any new features it plans on introducing in order to raise the profile of its attempts to compete with other platforms. The introduction of The Daily last year may not have been that exciting from a consumer standpoint, but it ensured everyone knew all about in-app subscriptions in advance of the feature’s launch. Expect a similar industry-targeted feature evangelizing event, should Apple hold one late this month.

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The 7-inch iPad has been in testing at Apple for “over a year,” according to what Blair told AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski, but the firm doesn’t expect the company to release anything for the public based on that design in 2012. That runs contrary to reports we have heard earlier, including one from last week that suggested a 7.85-inch device was set for a late 2012 introduction, based on supply chain information.

My colleague Kevin Tofel suggested that there were good reasons to believe a smaller iPad could indeed be on the way; these include portability, credible competition in that space, dwindling iPod touch sales and a lower price point. Blair thinks that price is the main issue Apple actually has to address in terms of keeping the competition in check, and he suggests that Apple can work on that element without compromising on a screen “too small to express the software,” as Jobs had described the 7-inch form factor.

Instead, Wedge Partners sees Apple’s keeping the iPad 2 as part of its lineup following the introduction of an iPad 3 and just dropping the price of the iPad 2. It’s a strategy we have seen Apple use with the iPhone; it keeps the previous-generation device available as a lower-cost option, and with the iPhone 4S launch, it even kept the iPhone from two models ago, which can be had for free with a contract in the U.S.

Obviously Apple didn’t do this with the original iPad as a low-cost alternative to the iPad 2 this year when the newer tablet was introduced, but the situation has changed. When the iPad 2 came out, there was no tablet competitor that posed any real threat to Apple’s dominance. Now the Kindle Fire appears to be doing well, and Apple has to consider that others will join it and Barnes & Noble with an end run at the low end of the market. Also, the iPad 2 offered relatively little in terms of big splashy changes over the original; if an iPad 3 comes packing a Retina Display, as rumors suggest, it should be a big-enough upgrade to allow the iPad 2 to remain on sale without drawing too many sales away from the newer device. This is especially true if Apple cuts the storage on the older device to 8 GB, as it has traditionally done with older iPhones.

A cheaper iPad 2 alongside the iPad 3 is a way for Apple to have its cake and eat it too. It can press the advantages of a larger screen while also competing on price, which would work well from a marketing perspective (“Bigger is better, but not more expensive”). We will have to wait and see to find out what Apple actually does, but Blair’s thinking makes an awful lot of sense to this Apple watcher.

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The update includes some iPad-only goodies that take advantage of the device’s larger screen, as well as some general changes for all versions that replicate and one-up features found in Apple’s own iBooks, making it a much better all-around solution for users who’d rather just have one e-reading app on their devices. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new:

All devices

Kindle Personal Documents Service. Both iPhone and iPad users can now take advantage of Amazon’s Kindle Personal Document Service, which lets users email their own documents to special Send-to-Kindle email addresses assigned to each Amazon Kindle user account. The document will then show up in their iPad, iPhone or iPod touch Kindle app library, and be available for re-download across devices. Note that this does incur a fee, and requires a few initial steps to get set up. You can check out Amazon’s full guide to its Personal Document Service here for more info.

PDF Reader. Kindle apps for iOS now feature a built-in PDF reader that can open files from Mail or Safari, or PDFs transferred directly from a user’s computer via iTunes. The PDF feature also works with documents transferred using the newly-integrated Personal Documents Service mentioned above. This was the main (if not the only) advantage of iBooks over the Kindle app in my opinion, so now that it’s gone I’ll probably just use the Amazon app full-time.

iPad-only

New magazine design. Amazon is clearly trying to stay on top of the competition from Newsstand here, and in fact, its magazines now work with Newsstand. Amazon’s Kindle newspaper and magazine library now extends to the over 400 titles available on the Kindle Fire.

Print replica textbooks. Those still in school will benefit greatly from this feature, which makes thousands of print replica textbooks available on the iPad via the Kindle app. Textbook rentals are also available, and the print replica formatting means that it’ll be even easier for students to follow along in class with page and section numbering while also enjoying the advantages of a digital edition (searching, linked content, etc.)

This is a big, solid update from a company that’s currently nursing its own competitive tablet platform, and I must say I’m pretty impressed. What do you think of the new Kindle apps?

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