Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is ready to dominate the e-book market .The Cupertino-based tech giant recently acquired book analytics company BookLamp, which features BookGenome technology that is similar to Pandora.
BookLamp is a startup that breaks books down to data points. It also examines various scenes and allows companies to create lists of themes within the books. This technology takes books to another level.
How BookLamp works
Aaron Stanton (chief executive officer for BookLamps) used The DaVinci Code as an example of how the system works. It was found this book was 18.6% Religion and Religious Institutions, 9.4% Police & Murder Investigations, 8.2% Art and Art Galleries, and 6.7% Secret Societies & Communities. If a user was looking for a book similar to The DaVinci Code, BookLamp would help the user find a similar title with the aforementioned criteria. It is still unknown how much Apple paid for the company, however sources claim the iPhone maker paid over $10 million but less than $15 million. It was reported in the next 18 months, we can expect some exciting changes from iBooks. Apple also hopes to hire talent from eBay as an effort to boost the number of employees for BookLamp.
What this acquistion means for iBooks
Apple’s latest acquisition appears to be part of a plan to dethrone Amazon as the top seller for eBooks. Apple already remains in the lead in the smartphone and tablet market. Although the latter can be used as an e-reader, it is primarily a portable computer which can be used for many different purposes, Apple is still hoping tablet users will take advantage of iBooks and use the iPad instead of the Kindle.
Tim Cook (chief executive officer for Apple) announced the company completed 29 buy-ups within the last nine months. One of the most notable acquisitions was Beats.
