Unlike any other tablet device, the Apple tablet may provide college students immediate access to more than 8,700 eTextbooks the day the devices ship. CourseSmart, which provides the country’s largest digital library of college textbooks, developed an iPhone application in the Summer of 2009, and, it was specifically designed to be available on any future devices that run the iPhone operating system (iPhone OS), providing hundreds of thousands of students immediate access to their textbooks in the palm of their hands.

The iPad will provide an unprecedented opportunity for college students to immediately access their textbooks as eTextbooks on a large form device right out of the box, optimizing the student’s textbook experience through:

• Access to all core college textbooks from the country’s largest library of more than 8,700 eTextbooks from 15 different higher education publishers
• eTextbooks that cost an average of 50% less than print.
• eTextbooks that maintain page fidelity, full color, page numbers, illustrations, graphs, charts, etc. and optimized specifically for the iPhone OS
• Ability to search, copy and paste, highlight within their eTextbooks and integrate with notes summaries and any other online learning tools, as well as printing just the pages students need.

The potential student experience on a large form Apple tablet can be seen here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSjXO7Odh9E.

Video:

As Steve Jobs said recently, 75 million people already know how to use the iPad because they know how to use the iPhone or iPod touch.  That number includes millions of college students who will also be able to immediately access more than 8,800 core textbooks on an iPad via CourseSmart’s “eTextbooks for the iPhone” application.

Beginning today, the company will also be developing an optimized App specifically for the iPad that allows students to take advantage of the larger size and new features.  The new iPad application will be released as soon as the iPad is available on the market, currently scheduled for end of March.

The type of experience the company expects to create for the iPad can be seen here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSjXO7Odh9E.

College students currently spend $300-$400 a semester on textbook content but they save an average of 50% on each textbook they buy as a CourseSmart eTextbook, a 3 to 5 semester (depending on how many eTextbooks they buy) payback on a $499 device!  We believe that many students will see the combination of CourseSmart and the iPad as a way to get all of their textbook content on an exciting new multi-function device for the same amount of money or less than they are already spending on textbooks.