The beginning of the end for iBooks

5 reasons Apple’s touch App Store approach is the beginning of the end for iBooks - Book Bee

With Apple’s iBooks offering still struggling, and getting smashed by Amazon on catalogue range (even more so if you live outside the US) and probably sales, on one level it would make commercial sense for Apple to start trying to drive ebook purchases through iTunes. Otherwise others profit from the strength of Apple’s ecosystem, without Apple getting a cut.

But when looking at the “big picture” enforcing this is a ridiculously bad idea for the following reasons:

A.Apple paints itself as the big, bad corporation, and gets in a fight with everyone. It’s already a PR disaster.
B.The more they enforce their rules, the more they remind everyone that they are running a very closed ecosystem that can change on a dime, and the more they drive people to Android.

From Jason Davis’s Book Bee blog.

I don't see Apple backing off in any significant way (ie that will impact their short term revenue model). Apple is collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucracy.