Apple grabs 22% share of eBook market, announces PDF support for iBooks

As of today, there are 8,500 apps for the iPad on the App Store, which have been downloaded a total of 35 million times. Speaking at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, chief executive Steve Jobs said that averages out to about 17 apps downloaded per iPad, given that the company is selling one every 3 seconds for a total of more than 2 million since it first launched two months ago.

Apple revealed that iBooks will allow for wireless syncing across devices, including purchased content and user-added content such as bookmarks, notes and highlighting. The wireless capabilities will be available free of charge for iBooks users on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

iBooks gaining PDF support, new features

Jobs quickly switched gears to the iPad's iBook app, announcing a new version of software due out later this month that will add new features that will let users highlight text, paste sticky notes, bookmark pages, and add bookmarks to the title's table of contents.

Jobs also announced that the new iBooks would add support for PDFs, a feature widely requested for its e-book platform. The new update will be available later this month, and will feature a separate bookshelf for users to view their PDF.

Apple grabs 22% of eBook market

In the first 65 days, Jobs said users have downloaded more than 5 million books — amounting to 2.5 eBooks for every iPad sold and giving Apple a near-instant 22% slice of the eBook market. Five of the six largest publishers in the world are on board with iBooks, releasing content for the Apple-supported format.