San Francisco (CA) – CourseSmart has confirmed plans to offer 7,000 e-textbooks for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The academic textbooks – free for CourseSmart subscribers – will allow students to access digital notes and search for specific words or phrases.
“Nobody is going to use their iPhone to do their homework, but this does provide real mobile learning,” Frank Lyman, CourseSmart’s executive VP told the Wall Street Journal. “If you’re in a study group and you have a question, you can immediately access your text.”
According to Lyman, the digital books will be priced approximately 50 percent less than their physical counterparts.
Although CourseSmart texts are not available on Amazon’s Kindle or Kindle DX, Lyman noted that he would like to see the books available “wherever college students want them.”
However, Lyman conceded that the two companies “haven’t yet [held] any conversations.”
