Status and Trend of E-book Store Applications
Modern smart mobile devices offer media-rich and native features that are highly useful for e-book applications. In particular, many e-book application developers have chosen Apple’s iOS mobile devices such as iPad, or iPhone as the target device to provide more creative and richer user experience, as evidenced by the rapidly increasing number of publication apps in Apple’s App Store. In this paper, three major types of e-book apps from the App Store were examined from a developer’s perspective to provide a focused overview of the status and trends of iOS e-book apps and an analysis of related technology, architecture, and user interface design issues. The three representative e-book apps were analyzed according to their purposes, functions, and user satisfaction, so that user interface design guideline is established for the developer implementation. It was clear that e-book apps still had plenty of room to grow to take full advantage of unique mobile platform features and truly fulfill their potential. In particular, introduction of two-or three-dimensional visualization and context-awareness for the behavior component could further enhance e-book app’s usability and utility. This paper aims to serve as a reference point and guide for developers and practitioners interested in using iOS as a platform for e-book applications, particular from the technical point of view. Status and Trend of E-book Store Applications
Awareness and ownership of modern smart mobile devices are growing, spurred by marketing campaigns from Apple.com or Amazon.com recently as well as press coverage and word-of-mouth buzz. According to IHS iSuppli said that the global sales of smart devices in 2011 is 478 million and in 2015 will be 2000 million. Furthermore, Mobilewalla website indicated that today the app count rose
to 987,863 across all 4 platforms; an average of 2,000 apps enter the marketplace each day (with numbers higher at end of year for holiday rush). Especially the most popular app category in 2011.1.22 from 148Apps biz investigation is books. E-books application promise to revolutionize the way the world reads [4 ]. Internet technology and applications or publishing industries are all seeking for new opportunities contributes to the attention of e-books topic becoming unprecedented.
In light of the discussion above, in this study, iPhones or iPads were selected to represent mobile devices. The iOS platform was selected to represent mobile software platforms. Top 25 apps in related categories from the Apple App Store were selected to represent e-book apps. In this context, the
remainder of the paper is structured as follows to focus on the review of iOS e-book apps from application developer’s perspective. Section 2 examines how iOS supports e-book applications. Section 3 describes the current status of iOS e- book applications based on an examination of the top 25
applications in this area in Apple’s App Store. Section 4 covers a design guideline using JQuery technologies that support e-book applications.
App Store classified the applications into twenty-two categories as of April 13, 2012: Books, Business,
Catalogues, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Games, Healthcare & Fitness, Lifestyle, Medical, Music, Navigation, News, Newsstand, Photo & Video, Productivity, Reference, Social Networking, Sports, Travel, Utilities and Weather. E- book applications that include all types of publication such as books, magazines, newspapers, journals, catalogs, etc. were distributed in many different categories. We can find publication-like applications not only in Books and Newsstand categories, but also in specific domain or leisure topics such as Business, Catalogues, Education,Entertainment, Finance, Healthcare & Fitness, Lifestyle, Medical, and Travel. The reason for diverse distribution is that the publications are focus media. Women may like to read fashion magazines; however, men may like to read sport magazines. Even among the same gender, different age or different personal characteristic results to different preference for the book types. Hence, in this paper, three representative apps which respectively stand for leisure book, picture book and business report were analyzed to
demonstrate the current status of e-book applications on iOS and to identify the implications from a developer’s perspective.
improving business, education, and leisure for the public. There was still plenty of space to grow for e-book apps to take full advantage of unique mobile platform features. In particular, introduction of two- or three-dimensional visualization and deeper integration of context-awareness could further enhance e-book app’s usability and utility