Apple announced its new digital textbook product last week during a press conference in New York City and some analysts are already viewed the company’s efforts as an early success. According to Global Equity Research analyst Trip Chowdry, Apple sold approximately 350,000 iBooks textbooks within the first three days of availability. Using Global Equity’s third-party tracking system, Chowdry also estimates that Apple’s iBooks Author tools was downloaded 90,000 times during the same period, AllThingsD reports. Those numbers would certainly be impressive, but Apple has not announced any numbers with regard to its new iBooks textbooks product. It is also unclear what percentage of Chowdry’s estimates went to students and what percentage went to curious iPad owners looking to sample Apple’s new interactive textbook product.

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Moments ago at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Apple’s VP of marketing Phil Schiller announced what has been rumored for weeks — Apple is setting its sights on the textbook industry. It seems that Apple will be more of an ally to textbook publishers with its new initiative, however, which is a drastically different approach from the company’s entrance into the music business when it ruffled the feathers of the major labels. Noting the challenges kids face in school, Apple is playing up the company’s strengths in delivering some of the best tools to help publishers deliver great content, made specifically for the iPad. Hit the break for more.

Textbooks for iPad, which became available by way of a new textbook category in iBooks 2, provide students with a modern, interactive replacement for conventional printed textbooks. They support multitouch gestures and also feature dictionary look-up integration and annotation. Students can highlight text, take notes and even create virtual note cards to reference later while studying.

Initially, high school-level textbooks will be made available in the iBookstore and they will each be priced at $14.99 or less. The first round of publishers with textbooks available for the iPad include Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

To create interactive textbooks and other digital books for the iPad, Apple has also introduced iBooks Author. The Mac application provides robust tools that let anyone build and publish interactive digital books for Apple’s iBooks store. It has the same look and feel as Apple’s iWork apps, and includes features like gallery support, 3D animation, video and interactive image support and more. Users can even insert custom Javascript or HTML5 code into eBooks using iBooks Author.

iBooks 2 is available immediately as a free download in Apple’s iOS App Store, and iBooks Author is available in the Mac App Store for free as well.

As revealed in his authorized biography, Steve Jobs figured out the secret to making a truly user friendly television ahead of his untimely passing. But a reimagined TV wasn’t the only revolutionary product Jobs had a hand in that we have yet to see come to fruition. According to several reports, Apple plans to unveil a new product at a press conference on Thursday that it hopes will change the way students use textbook. Read on for more.

Citing unnamed sources familiar with the plans, The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple will reveal a new digital textbook product on Thursday that will give publishers a platform with which to create interactive educational materials optimized for the iPad. The announcement will include partnerships with multiple publishers according to the report, and at least one, McGraw-Hill, has been working with Apple on its new iPad textbook product since June.

According to Walter Isaacsson’s authorized biography, Steve Jobs had been meeting with a number of publishers and he thought all textbooks should be “digital and interactive, tailored to each student and providing feedback in real time.”

Apple will not be the first company to introduce digital textbooks to the market, but it is perhaps in the best position to deliver a product with the potential to succeed on a wide scale. Multiple universities have already begun to test programs that involve distributing iPads to students, and Apple’s tablet is by far the most popular slate on the market today. Additionally, a less expensive iPad 2 model expected to be released when Apple launches its next-generation iPad 3 will make the iOS tablet line even more accessible.

“Who better than Apple to revolutionize textbooks?” IDC analyst Al Hilwa told The Journal. “Everyone, including the industry and universities, have to come together, and this is the kind of thing Apple does really well.”

Remember those rumors about Apple holding a mid-to-late January event in NYC? Well, invites just went out to media, and focus is on education as some had rumored. We’d imagine one of the event focal points to be on reinventing and transforming the textbook industry.

Developing…

The Wall Street Journal has chimed in with its assessment of the Apple tablet and has described the many ways Steve Jobs is supposedly aiming to reshape how we read books, browse newspapers, play games and consume TV with Apple’s new tablet device. Long a stronghold, Apple is reportedly courting the educational market and has developed this tablet with electronic  textbook technology which will presumably take the e-book reading experience a step beyond the current Kindle-experience. The Apple tablet may also reportedly fill the gap that exists for newspapers who have been clamoring for a digital distribution channel that offers a better overall experience than what is provided by a 6 inch e-ink device. Apple is rumored to be in talks with The New York Times, Conde Nast Publications, HarperCollins and News Corp in this endeavor. Hit the jump for Apple’s rumored plans for television and gaming on its tablet device.

Anyone who has owned a 9 to 10-inch slate device knows that it hit the sweet spot for casual movie or television watching and Apple may try to capitilize on the feature by bringing a “Best of TV” subscription-based TV service to the tablet. Rumors suggest that Apple has been negotiating with CBS and Disney which owns ABC to bring four to six shows per channel to the tablet. As was the case with the iPod touch, Apple is also thought to be collaborating with Electronic Arts to showcase the gaming capabilities of its tablet device. Other features potentially include virtual sticky notes, facial recognition technology that recognizes each user presumably to deliver user-specific content, and , of course, a virtual onscreen keyboard.

Details on how Apple is going to integrate these diverse services into the tablet is sparse but at least some of the content may be accessible from iTunes which may be moved to a cloud-based infrastructure following Apple’s purchase of Lala. The other unknown is the wireless connectivity which is needed for such a device. Rumors are hot and heavy that the tablet will feature a Qualcomm chipset that may support Verizon Wireless EV-DO. Qualcomm also makes the Gobi chipset which includes GSM/HSDPA in addition to CDMA/EV-DO connectivity so the tablet may not be a carrier-specific device.  Anyone else going to be glued to their computer next Wednesday to see how these rumors pan out and what other surprises Apple may have up its sleeve?

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When it rains, it pours and information is pouring out about the rumored “super-sized” Amazon Kindle. The upcoming Kindle, now known as the Kindle DX, will pack a full-featured 9.7-inch electronic ink display, 5-way navigation button and a QWERTY keyboard into its large white housing. It basically looks like the designers took a Kindle 2 and stretched its screen from 6 inches to 9.7 inches, and then squished the keyboard in the process. The new Kindle DX will reportedly feature an improved web browser, the ability to add annotations in addition to notes and highlights and a long awaited native PDF reader. In addition to newspaper and periodicals, the Kindle DX is designed to support textbooks and, according to the Wall Street Journal, a special edition packed with pre-installed textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar is being released as part of a college trial. Lev Gonick, chief information officer for Case Western Reserve University, claims that a lucky bunch of select college students at Case Western Reserve, as well as Pace, Princeton, Reed, Arizona State, and the Darden School at the University of Virginia are signed up to test out this new device starting in the Fall semester. Sweet! Hit the jump for a few blurry images of the Kindle DX seemingly snagged from a slide show presentation.

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