e-book

Apple ran its first iPad commercial during the Academy Awards on Sunday night. The 30-second advertisement shows the tablet computer sitting on an unidentified man's lap as he whisks through the features and functions in veteran style.

Freescale Semiconductor on Monday announced a new processor that could help make the next generation of e-readers more affordable. Freescale's i.MX508 applications processor relies on ARM Cortex-A8 technology and a hardware-based display controller from E Ink to drive costs down.

With the ARM core running at 800 MHz, the i.MX508 provides twice the rendering speed of Freescale's last round of e-reader processors. That means faster page turns for consumers, more speed for value-added applications, and advanced touch solutions for manufacturers.

Amazon.com unleashed new e-reader software Thursday that enables selected BlackBerry handsets from Research In Motion to access and read e-books directly on mobile devices based in the United States. Called Kindle for BlackBerry, the free beta app is available for download from the world's largest online retailer.

With the introduction of the iPad, Apple's status as a cultural icon reached new heights. Based on an unscientific survey of newspapers archived by The Newseum, pictures of or stories about the tablet-style computer appeared on front pages in at least 47 states and the District of Columbia and no fewer than 24 countries on six continents -- in places as varied as Bulgaria, Uruguay, Turkey, and Portugal.

With Apple's new iPad acting as a big rock thrown into the e-book pond, Kindle maker Amazon.com has given in to the pricing demands of publisher Macmillan. The move could mean fewer under-$10 prices for new e-books.

Amazon, whose Kindle is currently the front-running e-book reader and which offers a large inventory of e-books, had been resisting Macmillan's requirement of a pricing hike. New e-books on Amazon have been priced at $9.99, but Apple is reportedly offering higher prices to publishers for iPad content.

'We Will Have To Capitulate'

Stung by complaints about dropped calls and slow wireless downloads, AT&T Inc. is going to spend an additional $2 billion to improve its network this year.

The country's largest telecommunications company has faced an aggressive ad campaign from Verizon Wireless that attacks the quality and range of AT&T's network.

On Thursday, AT&T executives spent an unprecedented amount of time on their fourth-quarter earnings conference call to defend the wireless network and detail how they plan to make it better.

The iPad won't make its market debut until March, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs is already jockeying for e-reader leadership. Jobs told The Wall Street Journal that publishers are withholding their e-books from Amazon.com -- because they aren't happy with the digital book-selling giant.

So far, Apple is having a very good week. On Monday, the company announced profits were up nearly 50 percent in its fiscal 2010 first quarter. This good news comes just before Wednesday's big event, when the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is expected to unveil a much-awaited tablet computer.

The quarter, which ended the day after Christmas, brought in $15.68 billion in revenue and a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion. In the same quarter a year ago, revenue was $11.88 billion and profit about $2.26 billion.

Apple is in talks with the McGraw-Hill Companies and Hachette Book Group to include educational and trade titles on its planned tablet computer, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

McGraw-Hill Education, the third largest educational publisher in the U.S. by sales, is discussing getting electronic textbooks and parts of its online learning system onto the tablet, say two people. Apple has also held talks with trade book publisher Hachette Book Group about distributing e-books on the tablet, says one person involved in the discussions.

At a time when everything -- even Bluetooth headsets -- is becoming a platform for third-party applications, Amazon.com has decided to make its Kindle e-reader part of the crowd. On Thursday, the online retail giant said it's encouraging developers to build and upload content to the Kindle Store and promised a Kindle software development kit (SDK) soon.