CNet reports that the Borders iOS app has removed its e-bookstore browsing feature, in line with the dictates of Apple’s new policy on in-app purchases. However, unlike some of the apps I mentioned in my last post on this issue, Borders doesn’t tell people to go to Borders.com to buy e-books—it tells them to start using the Kobo app instead. The Kobo app still features an e-bookstore link a built-in e-bookstore, though undoubtedly its days are numbered given Apple’s moves to bring all content-based apps into compliance with its guidelines.
Last month, we reported that Borders was shifting all of its e-bookstore operations (and accounts) over to Kobo; this change is at once a continuation of that move, and a way to bring the Borders reader into compliance with Apple’s requirements. It’s interesting to ponder what this change means. Is Borders getting out of the e-book business?
Chris Walters’s experience with a Borders employee who won’t buy an e-reader as a matter of principle seems to suggest that at least some people there now see e-books as undesirable competition. (Though, granted, a store employee is about as far from the hallowed halls where that kind of decision is made as you can get and stay in the same corporation.)
