Apple Acquires BookLamp To Boost Its E-Book Efforts | TechTree.com

Apple Acquires BookLamp To Boost Its E-Book Efforts

The deal is valued anywhere between $10 million and $15 million, and has a lot to do with Apple trying to take on Amazon.

 

Tech giant Apple has confirmed reports suggesting it acquired book analytics service BookLamp, in an effort to fight Amazon in the e-book market. The company did not disclose details of the deal, but according to sources cited by TechCrunch the purchase cost Apple between $10 million and $15 million.

BookLamp's most well known product was its Book Genome Project, which has been dubbed as the “Pandora for Books”. The service suggests books users should read based on natural language analysis of titles they've read in the past.

The startup's strengths in interpreting data could help Apple improve its iBook service, offering better recommendations, search and categorization to users. Ultimately, the move will help Apple better take on giant Amazon's e-book service who's success has given rise to the Kindle line of devices.

According to the TechCrunch report, BookLamp was even in talks with Amazon at some point of time, but it is unclear how far that went. In the end Amazon ended up acquiring GoodReads, another book recommendation service.

BookLamp was initially in talks with Apple to just share its knowledge and technology, but as it has often happened Apple wanted to make sure the startup was working just for them. This however cannot be confirmed and probably never will be.


TAGS: Apple, BookLamp, E-Books, iBook, Amazon, Kindle

 
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