Amazon has been pursuing the higher education market
with Kindle e-textbook sales and rentals. In the last year, it has also hired
Raghu Murthi from Microsoft to lead its education and enterprise efforts;
acquired TenMarks, a math materials ed tech company; launched Whispercast,
which allows educators to distribute and manage e-books; and introduced new
models of the Kindle Fire HD and HDX that support corporate-level security and
encryption.
Despite that, the online retail giant seems a bit more
passive when it comes to the K-12 market, according to Frank Catalano, an
author and analyst of digital education and consumer technology, in his post for EdSurge. However, that could be about to change.
Amazon has been working with educators in Brazil on a
Kindle app that has wirelessly provided more than 200 e-textbook titles using
Whispercast. The company also claims it has distributed more than 40 million
e-textbooks through its new Kindle Reading app.
It allows teachers to read, highlight, and make notes
directly into textbooks even when the device is offline. The Kindle Reading app
is free and can be used on iOS, Mac, Windows, and Android devices, turning
practically every electronic device into a Kindle and making every user a potential
Amazon customer, according to Catalano.
“It may be that Amazon isn’t disinterested in the
overall K-12 education game. It may simply prefer to redefine the game’s rules
and playing field,” Catalano wrote. “By focusing on global opportunities and
the Kindle Reading App—irrespective of the underlying hardware—it can do what
Amazon does best: sell content that, in this case, just happens to be
e-textbooks.”
