When Apple banned Adobe’s Flash from its iPhone and iPad, it knocked the wind out of Adobe’s strategy to bring its widely-used design tools to the emerging smartphone and tablet platforms. This has left most publishers in limbo without a clear strategy to get onto these platfoms.

Of course, no-one expects it to be quite as easy as this video shows, and there are some well-founded concerns that Adobe’s first-generation solution might turn out to be a fair bit of smoke and mirrors.

But put all this aside for a moment and just dream a little about how things might be soon.

• Apple’s iBooks
• Amazon Kindle for iPad
• Barnes and Noble eReader
• Kobo Reader (which is also the Borders eReader and will soon be the Whitcoulls eReader for the iPad)
• Ibis Reader (this is interesting because it’s actually an HTML5 web app rather than a native iPad/iPhone app)
• Stanza
• vBookz (actually a text-to-speech reader app rather than a traditional e-reading app)

Among Perlow’s findings:

• Apple’s iBooks is the flashiest but “of all the reader applications we’ve looked at, it is actually the least functional. Apple designed iBooks to behave and act like a real book, and focused more on the aesthetics and UI than actual App functionality with the initial release.”
• Amazon’s Kindle wins in terms of the size of its 600,000-title ebook store but “from a feature perspective, the Kindle software is pretty weak when compared to its hardware counterpart.”
• Interestingly, it’s the Barnes and Noble eReader that wins the highest plaudits from Perlow. “Of all the paid content readers, by far the best one in existence is probably the Barnes & Noble eReader application.” But it’s probably not so useful outside of the US because of its ties to the very US-focused B&N store.
• Of particular interest in this part of the world is the Kobo which will shortly be released in this part of the world as the Whitcoulls reader app. For Perlow, it stacks up pretty well. “It’s extremely polished and very well-designed,” he says.
• The Ibis Reader is different from the others in being written in HTML5. It reads non-DRM ePub files. “Compared to the other reader apps on this list, the reading features within Ibis Reader are pretty spartan. … However, the interface is very clean and simple to use, and the reading experience is actually pretty good when compared to the native apps.”
• Stanza was the original e-reading app that popularised e-reading on the iPhone. It’s the latest to the iPad party but the result is good according to Perlow. “Stanza is by far the most sophisticated e-Reader application for iPad, as it supports not only the open EPUB format but also the legacy Mobipocket, PalmDoc (DOC), Microsoft LIT formats as well as HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word and Rich Text Format (RTF)…. If you have lots of content that you’ve collected over the years, Stanza is definitely a must-have app. There’s absolutely no downside, it’s free to use and does more than any e-book reader app on this list.”
• vBookz is a US$2.99 text-to-speech reader which works only with public domain ebooks  at this stage. Perlow concludes, “vBookz is an extremely interesting and exploitative iPad application, and one which may be good for getting children interested in classic literature and also a useful app for the visually impaired.”

Read the full ZDNet e-reader app review here.

UPDATE: ZDNet has also posted a comparison of ebook reader apps for the Google Android platform. Check it out.

iOS4 is a free upgrade for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPads. It’s rumoured that another platform will be eventually added to the iOS family when Apple uses it to revamp its unsuccessful Apple TV set-top box.

Of note for publishers:

• Apple is talking up its iBookstore as the third store platform, following the original iTunes and the App Store. It claims that, among the large publishers who’ve supported the iBookstore since launch on 3 April, sales through the iBookstore now represent 22% of their ebook sales.
• The iBooks e-reading app has now been ported to the iPhone and iPod Touch.
• The iBookstore now operates wirelessly, no PC required, and will syncronise your ebooks across multiple Apple devices. This includes your ebook library, the place you’re at in the ebook you’re reading and — a new feature — your bookmarks and annotations.
• iBooks now reads PDFs as well as ePub formatted ebooks. This will make it useful as a reader for business documents as well as adding what is still a popular ebook format and might serve as a useful interim “quick and dirty” format for illustrated books and textbooks.
• On the hardware front, a new iPhone model was announced which will improve the reading experience with a higher resolution, 960 x 640,  327 pixel per inch display and an extended battery life.
• iOS4 will also see the launch on 1 July of Apple’s mobile advertising platform, iAds. iAds will open up a new source of income for app developers, potentially opening advertising to any of the quarter of a million apps. Apple will take 40% and return 60% to developers. In a show of strength, it signed up US$60 million of A-list advertisers to support the launch, a figure Apple claims is half of the entire projected mobile ad spend for the second half of 2010. One neat feature will be the ability to launch web ads from an in-app browser so that the user remains inside the application when viewing the advertiser’s website rather than being taken out of the app to launch the Safari web browser.

Finally, in what is becoming an unfortunate pattern in Apple’s announcements, a revised developer agreement takes aim at potential Apple rivals, locking them out of the App store. This time, Google appears to be the target with its competing mobile ad platform, AdMob. Google beat Apple this week by releasing the SDK (software development kit) for its in-app mobile advertising for the iPhone and iPad. The trouble is, in a move reminiscent of its ban on Adobe’s Flash platform on the eve of the iPad launch, Apple just changed the terms of its developer agreement, making it unlikely that any app developers will be able to incorporate AdMob ads without risking being banned from the App store.

More on the launch: See the Techcrunch summary of key points from the iPhone and iOS4 launch.

The reason is an escalation in Apple’s long-running battle with Adobe over its Flash platform. Apple’s latest move bans any content generated using Adobe’s Flash software from its App Store. Flash is one of the most commonly-used systems for creating rich, interactive content.

This might seem like an esoteric spat between two tech Titans but the latest turn in this long-running dispute will be a special blow to magazine and newspaper publishers, and to book publishers who were hoping the iPad would open up textbooks and illustrated books unsuited to the more basic Amazon Kindle-style ebook readers. Ironically, this ban looks like it might catch out some of the high profile magazines and newspapers, such as Wired and the New York Times, that have been trotted out in the past few weeks to show off the iPad’s capabilities.

Publishers (and indeed other media companies such as video and game developers) are heavily invested in Adobe’s applications for creating their content. They don’t want to learn new tools, they want their existing tools to take them into the new media.

[Update: 5 May 2010. Apple's move may prompt an anti-trust probe, according to this New York Post story. ]

So Adobe’s strategy with its Flash platform — to make rich media content available on any platform without having to produce a different edition for every device out there — promised to take a big burden off publishers and open up their content to the whole market.

Until Apple came along with the iPhone and now the iPad.

Apple refused to host Flash on these devices. Now that these devices are ruling the mobile web roost, their Flash no-show leaves a big hole in this tidy strategy, moving this spat from an irritation to a serious business problem for content developers.

Recently it appeared that Adobe had found a clever work-around to circumvent Apple’s strictures using technology called Packager for iPhone. This turns Adobe’s Flash code  into the native program code used by Apple’s iPhone and iPad. It’s set to be released this week with the latest CS5 update to Adobe’s software.

Apple, however, used the launch a couple of days ago of OS4.0 — a major upgrade to its operating system for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches — to introduce new contractual terms to its tightly-run developer programme. The new terms have the effect of stymieing Adobe’s work-around and look likely to keep all Flash applications off the Apple devices permanently.

In doing so, Apple hopes to force publishers and developers to create native applications written especially for its devices instead of using Adobe’s system to produce a single generic edition to run on many different devices such as an iPad, a Blackberry and a Google Android device.

Apple hopes its move will cause publishers to rethink their strategies. Forcing publishers to produce multiple editions, or to drop support for less important platforms is great for Apple but bad news for publishers and will also lessen the chances of competing devices succeeding against Apple.

It should certainly cause publishers to rethink their strategies but not in the way that Apple hopes.

Fortunately, there are things publishers can do. But it means they’ll have to show some restraint in the face of all the “flashy” new toys for producing great-looking content, and the smooth payment system that Apple is throwing in their direction.

While Apple is exercising an iron grip on its App Store, it’s still open to the web. So developers and publishers can sidestep the App store’s strictures and use standard web technologies – including HTML, CSS, and Javascript – to produce rich, interactive content that will run on the iPad, iPhone or the many other devices that offer web access.

Ironically, this is made easier by Apple’s solid support for web standards and, in particular the emerging HTML 5 specification. Many useful HTML 5 features are already widely implemented, including the ability to run offline web apps so you don’t have to be connected all the time. Others, such as native support for video and audio (no external plug-in programs required), are not far behind. The Safari browser and open source Webkit framework that Apple uses in its iPhone and iPad are, so far, being good corporate citizens in their support of these important emerging standards.

In this regard, a useful development framework is Phonegap. This system allows you essentially to turn a website built using HTML, CSS and Javascript into an iPhone app. And according to its developers, their system, while superficially in the same boat as Adobe’s Flash platform, will survive Apple’s change to its developer terms. It offers a path to Apple’s iPhone App store as well as the Google Android app marketplace and the Blackberry.

For publishers, the downside of this is that the toolset is more the domain of web developers than their graphic designers. But they’re going to need to upgrade web capabilities anyway and sticking to web standards will make a reasonable fist of cross-platform rich content.

This is especially true for book publishers who already have a widely adopted ebook standard called ePub which is based on (X)HTML and CSS web standards (and is the standard adopted by Apple in its new iBookStore). Newspaper and magazine publishers have yet to rally behind a standard but it’s almost certain to be based, again, on web standards.

If the publishing industry can get its act together quickly enough, it’s quite possible that all of the print media could use the same standard. For instance, work on the next version of ePub should have better support for interactivity, rich media and the more story-centric structure that newspaper and magazine publishers need.

In the short term, this approach won’t offer the same slickness as a hardware-specific iPad edition, but it still offers a credible way to produce mobile media that will work for readers and advertisers. And it — or its threat — might just help nudge Apple off its path to world domination of the media business.

Billed as “the world’s first touch-enabled read-along colour story book”, a feature of the system is that it highlights the text as it reads aloud, each word zooming out as it’s spoken. The reader can tap on any word to have it highlighted and spoken back or spelled.

It’s similar to the increasingly popular Scrollmotion system but with more sophisticated handling of the read-along text. The QBook also includes a puzzle, colouring and the ability to record your own dialogue.

Among the features listed by the company are:

• Personalize each book with ‘this book belongs to …
• Swipe-to-Read™ to highlight and playback the story at your own pace
• Touch-to-Hear™ individual words spoken
• Touch-to-Spell™ to hear the letters that spell each and every word
• Auto Play to enjoy the narration
• Use the iRead™ Function to read and record the story yourself and customize your book
• Use the Colour Palette to paint each page and save this to customize your book
• Choose the Easy/Hard Word Find puzzle to find words from the story
• Choose the Easy/Hard Memory Pairs game and match the picture card pairs
• Save your high scores and advance up the levels

There’s a free app demo version of a Penguin title, Seb’s Tail, as well as the full version for NZ$6.49 / US$4.99, the same price as the Milly Molly title. You’ll find the titles by searching the App Store for Kiwa Media.

Sounds like more than a mouthful but this is very good news for ebook development. It potentially opens up the important iPhone channel to content from major commercial publishers who, love it or hate it, won’t release their books without DRM.

The ePub/Adobe Content Server 4 DRM combination is the system we’re planning to use in New Zealand for our 1000 Great New Zealand eBooks promotion and it is the one that is widely viewed as the best shot we have in the short term to create an open standard for ebooks, ‘open’ in the sense that will operate on many devices and can be sold or rented through many retail  channels.

Of course, this is bleeding edge technology so nothing is meant to be simple. Txtr is a German company — one to watch, by the way — and right now you can’t install their app in New Zealand or, I imagine, in most other countries, mainly because of various rights issues.

The important news, though, is that they’ve actually ported Adobe’s mobile reader SDK (software developer kit) to the iPhone and built an App with it that’s met Apple’s approval.

Will leading iPhone e-reading app Stanza soon add Adobe’s mobile reader technology?

Is this going to be Mac vs PC in reverse? Surely, much as we love the wonderful things Apple is doing, we don’t want to hand the prize over to one company again.

This battle is being fought on two fronts. One is the gadgets themselves. The other is the all-important marketplaces for applications and content that surround them. While we have our own fears about Google’s market power, at least the Android market is open and the Android platform is open source.

This article in TechCrunch from US Whitepages VP of Mobile Kevin Nakao looks at these emerging Android marketplaces and the opportunities around them and should help settle the nerves of early Android supporters.

Nakao admits their own Android app results are pretty mediocre when lined up against the iPhone — just 17% in fact. But he points to several good reasons why this will change, sooner rather than later. Among his points:

• Unlike the iPhone with its single Apple-owned store, the Android marketplace is open. There are more app sellers with more flexibility in what they can offer and how quickly they can get apps and content to the market. This will be good for innovation, says Nakao, and offer more purchase options for consumers.
• Google’s market strategy means Telcos will step up to the plate and offer integrated carrier billing to Android marketplaces. This has the potential to drive revenues strongly as consumers respond to “low friction” purchasing and subscription offers, one of things that Apple, of course, already offers.

Nakao makes several other useful points to support his case. While he uses US market examples, this is a trend that will play out very quickly around the world.

Read the full article in TechCrunch.

[Update: 1:37pm Just had a call to tell me that Amazon is not presently able to ship to New Zealand but will ship to Australia. Have amended story.

Update: 9 October 2009.  See story: Details still unfolding.]

And if you don’t want to buy a US$279 Kindle from Amazon.com, you can still access it from the free Kindle app for the iPhone. The international wireless support comes via the AT&T wireless network. Outside the US, AT&T uses the common GSM system supported by operators such as Vodafone, Telecom and Hutchison. Amazon will add a US$1.99 surcharge for each ebook download from outside the US to cover wireless charges.

Among the publishers supporting the Amazon move with global rights, making their ebooks available for sales to non-US territories are:

Atlantic Books, Bloomsbury, Canongate, Faber and Faber, Hachette, Harlequin, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet, Penguin, Profile Books, Quercus, Simon & Schuster and Wiley.

A notable absence, Random House, is still in discussions with Amazon.

As well as books, more than 85 newspapers and magazines, including many international publications, are now available for subscription on the Kindle.

For those among who would have liked less global and more local in the territorial rights issue, it’s time to put that debate behind us and work with the new rules that will clearly be predicated on global editions. This will impact on English language titles and many other geograpahically dispersed languages such as Spanish.

• For publishers in all territories, it’s now time to do deals with Amazon, not just for international sales but for an early shot at early adopters in their domestic markets.
• For Amazon competitors in the ebook reader space such as Sony, it’s time to put the leisurely pace of global roll-outs behind them and crank into high gear. Let’s hope New Zealand and Australia are at the front of the queue now.
• For Amazon’s bookselling competitors, it’s time to get started because if they don’t build brand awareness in this space fast, they won’t get into the game. There’s only going to be room in customers’ heads for a tiny number of sites when they think where to go and shop. Booksellers at the country level will need to differentiate on the basis of local prices (Kindle sales are still $US but that will change), local title availability and local promotion.
• Expect to see the global rights issues sorted out pretty soon by early global e-booksellers such as Barnes and Noble‘s Fictionwise and the recent Canadian entrant with global aspirations, Shortcovers.

Amazon is already a major global presence. In the press release announcing this, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos refers to the “millions” of existing international Amazon customers. Certainly, a lot of them wil reside Downunder so we’ll expect a lot of Kindle users arriving here pretty smartly.

It’s our job now to make sure they’re reading local as well as international books. In this regard, the announcement this week that New Zealand copyright collective Copyright Licensing Limited (CLL) will lead the charge to get New Zealand books digitised and licensed to groups such as libraries, booksellers and others, couldn’t come soon enough. I’ll be part of that through the work we’ve been doing with the Digital Publishing Forum and the 1000 Great New Zealand Ebooks initiative.

Publishers will increasingly need to work with trusted digital content agregators  to get their digital content into many places, to negotiate with large players, track their digital sales and make sure their content is properly managed. Rights organisations such as CLL are well placed to do this if they can adapt from their current print-based role to the digital environment.

This very timely blog from Mike Shatzkin speculates on the need for such a role for the US rights organisation, the Copyright Clearance Center. Following the lead from CLL in New Zealand, we’re going to see more of this.

We live in exciting times.

In the e-reading space, the standard today is e-Ink which powers the screens on the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader and most of the dedicated ebook reading devices. E-Ink provides a good ink-on-paper reading experience in natural light and has low power consumption for a long battery life. But it’s still expensive to manufacture, only available in black and white, and suffers from slow screen refresh rates which affect things like scrolling and video (not possible currently), and leads to the annoying flash seen when turning pages on ebook readers.

Fujitsu and Bridgestone announced developments this year which address some of these issues, including colour which will be especially important for advertising-driven newspapers and magazines. But the most interesting “game changer” looks like the modified LCD technology coming out of a US/Taiwan start-up called Pixel Qi, founded by Mary Lou Jepsen whose design credits include the innovative screen technology behind the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child).

Pixel Qi’s innovation is to take the LCD and improve it rather than starting with a completely new technology. The ubiquitous LCD provides the good colour saturation and video-switching speed that e-papers lack to which Pixel Qi adds the longer battery life and sunlight readability features needed for effective e-reading and mobile operation. It does this through three selectable screen modes to suit the different reading and operating requirements. The other feature of Pixel Qi’s system that’s likely to boost its chances and reduce costs is that it can be manufactured using existing LCD manufacturing equipment and processes. The screens are scheduled to go into manufacturing later this year. No device manufacturers planning to use it have been named yet.

More in this article from E-paper Central.

Video of Pixel Qi founder Mary-Lou Jepsen demonstrating the Pixel Qi vs Kindle vs traditional LCD laptop.

Stanza’s COO Neelan Choksi will be in New Zealand shortly, keynoting the Digital Publishing Forum’s Future of the Book conference scheduled for June 24-25 in Auckland.

Stanza has become a hot property since it launched as the first ebook reading application for Apple’s iPhone. Less than a year old, it is one of its most downloaded applications in Apple’s App Store.

Stanza has been the talk of the ebook industry in recent months, something that Amazon would have been very aware of. In recognition of just how important the iPhone and smartphone market is becoming, Amazon released its own Kindle application for the iPhone just a month ago. The latest move to acquire Stanza is yet another example of how pragmatic Amazon is in its approach to this market. Basically, despite the proprietary nature of the Kindle system, Amazon is clearly not wed to a format in the way, for example, that Apple is. It appears to believe, very cleverly, that it needs to deliver its products and services to customers in whatever format the customer chooses rather than trying to convert customers to a particular system.

No doubt this thinking will also extend to media generated using Adobe’s content system, too. Adobe is a company in an increasingly strong position in ebook production and distribution. Stanza was an early supporter of Adobe’s mobile PDF and plans to add support for it in a future release as well as support for Adobe’s Content Server DRM. Along with Stanza’s imminent move to other platforms, in particular Google’s Android, Amazon looks like it will be covering all the bases with market leading platforms.