People reading on their PDAs could use Mobipocket Reader (available
since March 2000), Microsoft Reader (April 2000), Palm Reader (March
2001), Acrobat Reader (May 2001 for Palm Pilot, and December 2001 for
Pocket PC), and finally Adobe Reader (May 2003) that replaced Acrobat
Reader to read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of
copyrighted books.
Publishers began to digitize their books and sell digital versions
online in various formats (LIT, PRC, PDF, OeB), on their own websites
or in the digital bookstores of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Palm,
Mobipocket, Numilog, and the likes.
# Smartphones
In 2004, prices of PDAs began to drop, with the leaders still being
Palm, Sony and Hewlett-Packard. People began buying smartphones instead
of PDAs. The first smartphone was Nokia 9210, launched as early as 2001
with a Symbian platform , and followed by Nokia Series 60, Sony
Ericsson P800, and the smartphones of Motorola and Siemens. Sony
stopping selling PDAs in February 2005. 3,7% of cellphones sold in 2004
were smartphones. 9% of cellphones sold in 2006 were smartphones, with
90 million smartphones sold for one billion cell phones. Apple launched
the iPhone in June 2007 in the U.S., in late 2007 in Europe and in 2008
in Asia.
Would people prefer reading on mobile handsets like the iPhone 3G (with
its Stanza Reader) or the T-Mobile G1 (with Google's platform Android
and its reader), or would they prefer using ebook readers? Was there a
market for both smartphones and ebook readers? These were some of the
fascinating issues discussed at the time.
2005 > FROM GOOGLE PRINT TO GOOGLE BOOKS
[Summary]
Google launched Google Print in May 2005, followed by Google Books in
August 2006, while struggling with associations of authors and
publishers. The beta version of Google Print went live in May 2005,
with: (a) a project aimed at publishers, launched in October 2004; and
(b) a project intended for libraries, launched in December 2004. Three
months later, Google Print was stopped until further notice because of
lawsuits filed by associations of authors and publishers for copyright
infringement. The program resumed in August 2006 under the new name of
Google Books. Google Books started offering books digitized in the
participating libraries (Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Oxford,
California, Virginia, Wisconsin-Madison, Complutense of Madrid, and New
York Public Library), with either the full text for public domain books
or excerpts for copyrighted books. Other libraries joined then. Google
also tried to settle a lawsuit with associations of authors and
publishers in October 2008. A agreement has not be reached yet (as of
July 2011).
***
Google launched Google Print in May 2005, followed by Google Books in
August 2006, while struggling with associations of authors and
publishers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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