ABSTRACT
These markets are open to disruption from the large technology players, and Steve Jobs expressed his aim to crack open the school textbook market: ‘Jobs had his sights set on textbooks as the next business he wanted to transform. He believed it was an $8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruction’ (Isaacson, Chapter 38). However, publishers have made signifi cant advances themselves in terms of the creation of digital materials and the move from product to service. Sectors such as journal publishing have been in the advance of digital developments, with over 90 per cent of journals now available online. Content has been both aggregated into large searchable databases, and disaggregated so that individual articles can be purchased. Whilst governments around the world continue to experiment with the introduction of digital content in schools, some publishers are looking to own the whole value chain in educational and academic markets by providing learning, testing and examination services.
