iPad Quick Notes: Book apps, release dates, AT&T

Here are some quick notes about the iPad and related matters.

Last month I reported on TechCrunch’s article about the highest number of paid apps in the iPhone app store being e-books. (There were still more games than e-books, but a higher percentage of them were free.)

Now Matthew Ingram at GigaOm reports that for the first time, the total number of book-related apps (most of them app-books) now outnumbers the total number of games in the App Store. There are over 26,000 books, but only about 24,000 games.

Some of this may have to do with last month’s 5,000-app explicit app purge—it is possible a higher number of those explicit apps might have been games, which would have lowered that category more than the e-book category.

9 to 5 Mac reports that a Los Angeles Examiner blogger claims to have confirmed that the iPad will be arriving in Apple stores for employee training on March 10th, March 26 is a likely release date, and the 3G model will not be available until April or May May. TV commercials will start airing on March 15th, emphasizing the iPad’s e-book-reading capabilities.

(Examiner is a local/regional freelance news blog. In the interest of full disclosure, I also write some occasional pieces for the local Springfield, Missouri Examiner.)

AT&T says it does not expect to see many new wireless contracts from the iPad. According to Reuters:

While AT&T has agreed to provide wireless connections to the iPad tablet computer, Randall Stephenson said he does not expect the device to result in many new service subscriptions for AT&T as consumers will instead use Wi-Fi or prepaid services, where they do not have to sign a service contract.

But wait, I thought AT&T was providing those prepaid services. Jobs said you could pay for it month by month without any contract lock-in? Why would AT&T get “subscriptions” out of it to begin with?