Apple has added about 1 million new iBooks users per week since they made the move to preinstall the app on devices as of the release of iOS 8.
Apple’s Director of iBooks Store Keith Moerer appeared at the Digital Book World Conference today to talk iBooks, and during the interview offered some updates on stats and insights into how Apple’s book business is going.
Moerer also noted that while preinstalling iBooks definitely helped with acquiring customers, the new iOS 8 Family Sharing features also helped boost customer acquisitions. Family Sharing allows up to 6 people in a household to share iBooks, iTunes content, and apps.
Moerer says that while the eventual plateauing of iBooks is “not unexpected and something we’ve seen in other digital media businesses,” he noted that there are a number of potential growth possibilities for the platform, via tie-ins with other iTunes content, such as movie and TV productions. He said Apple never foresaw those tie-in possibilities when they created the free iBooks Author app for the Mac.
Moerer mentioned that Japan is currently iBooks’ fastest growing market, however he believes the biggest opportunities for growth are in the UK, Germany, and France. Canada is also a growing market for the platform with a number of French publishers seeing success there.
