Apple Expected to Announce Textbook Initiative (AAPL)

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has tried to focus on the education market practically from the company’s founding. The Apple II was designed with a classroom in mind. Now Apple wants to push its iPad into the textbook business.

The company is expected to announce today a set of tools that would allow publishers to create textbooks that would be available on the Apple iPad tablets. The Wall Street Journal reports that the textbooks would run across a full range of schools and publishers, presumably from kindergarten through college.

Building a textbook ecosystem, though, could run into the same problems that the Apple II ran into years ago. The cost of the hardware, though now much lower, will strain smaller school budgets, and publishers are unlikely willingly to give up the healthy margins they currently earn on textbooks. It’s a noble effort, but like so many of those, one fraught with peril.