Peanutpress.com offers titles from many of the major commercial publishing houses and, prior to the acquisition, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Boulder, Colo.-based netLibrary, Inc.
The move is part of Palm’s strategy to deliver end-to-end handheld computing solutions enables the company to expand the use of eBooks by consumers and mobile professionals, and in the largely untapped education space.
While the eBook space is still fledgling, a December 2000 Forrester report
states that Digital delivery of custom-printed books, textbooks and eBooks will account for revenues of $7.8 billion, that is 17.5% of publishing industry revenues in five years.
The deal includes a Web-based storefront containing a growing list of
2,000 titles from most of the major U.S. publishing houses. It also includes the Peanut Reader, the leading eBook reader application, which runs on Palm OS(R) handhelds using Palm OS 3.0 and higher, as well as on Pocket PC handhelds. Peanut Reader and peanutpress.com will be called Palm Reader(TM) software and Palm Digital Media, respectively. Palm Digital Media, which will become a group within Palm, will retain the 17 peanutpress.com employees and remain in Maynard, Massachusets where it is currently based.
This is an empowering opportunity, one that will allow us to help people
make the most of their on-the-go-time, says Mike Lorion, vice president of Vertical Markets for Palm, Inc. Leisure readers, business professionals honing job skills, commuters catching up on the Wall Street Journal, or students backpacking 20-plus pounds of books can benefit from being able to carry reading materials in a device that weighs only ounces and also manages the rest of their information.
