Comment by grey-area
1 year ago
I agree they should, but the key part of the platform is the reader hardware. They'd need decent and cheap ereader hardware tied to the store, otherwise who would want to buy books there?
See the Apple books store for an example of how little people care about ebooks if they have to read them on a phone or tablet. Barnes & Noble are doing better than them which is surprising given Apple's clout and their attempts to strangle alternative stores like Kindle with rules on in-app stores.
The market share is something like
Amazon (Kindle Reader) - 80%
Barnes & Noble (Nook Reader) - 10%
Apple ebooks (no reader) - 5%
Other - 5%
In the US. Other markets aren't quite as skewed. Canada has Kobo/Amazon in very similar marketshare for example which is why Canadian Kindle prices are waaaay under what the exchange rate would suggest unlike pretty much every other electronics.
Apple is just a horrible place to buy books too. They only work on Apple devices. There is no Apple Books for PC or Android.