Authors' books are their own again, as Apple has changed its iBooks Author end user licensing agreement (EULA), now allowing users to sell their books elsewhere.

The clarified terms now state that although you can't distribute the .ibooks file anywhere but through iBooks, you can still tout your actual words around elsewhere.

"You retain all your rights in the content of your works, and you may distribute such content by any means when it does not include files in the .ibooks format generated by iBooks Author," the terms now say, accepting at last that we don't all exist solely to make Apple money.

Cheque book

Previously, the EULA demanded that any books being sold for money be sold only via Apple, saying, "If your work is provided for a fee… you may only distribute the work through Apple."

Writers understandably took affront to such over-zealous terms – after all, who wants to slave away for years on their opus only to hand the rights to it (and 30 per cent of the income from it) over to a Californian tech company?

Now you can slave away for years on your opus and hawk it via iBooks as well as through Kindle, Kobo, self-publishing and by selling snippets on your internet weblog. Good luck.

After showing off the final version of its KDJ-ONE mobile audio workstation at NAMM 2012, CyberStep has opened it up for pre-orders.

Looking uncannily like a Nintendo Game Boy hopped up on growth hormone, the KDJ-ONE is a portable music powerhouse that includes a synthesiser, sequencer and other audio skills.

To look at, it's impossible not to compare it to Nintendo's first handheld console. The main offender is the four-way directional pad on the left hand side, across from a distinctly "gamey" button layout on the right.

There are also shades of the short and fat third generation iPod Nano with its landscape display and central jog wheel where the Nano's click wheel would have been. Meanwhile, not resembling anything in particular, there are 15 backlit rubber keys at the bottom of the unit.

It's what's inside that counts

Its spec sheet lands it somewhere in between netbook and tablet turf, with an Intel Atom 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM powering a 5-inch 800x480px multitouch display.

There's also 4GB of solid state storage on board, backed up by a MicroSD card slot and USB storage if required.

Designed for music creation on the go, and possibly for those with abnormally large back pockets, this six track sequencer only weighs 380g.

It's Linux-based and CyberStep plan to release an SDK to allow users to program new synthesisers and features for the KDJ-ONE.

For music makers with a passion for the portable and a nostalgia for the Game Boy, the KDJ-ONE is available in black or white for US$829 with Wi-Fi, or US$799 without from the KDJ-ONE site for delivery by July.

Akai has launched the MPC Fly which combines 16 velocity-sensitive pads with an iPad 2 compartment for mobile beat making.

The MPC Fly gives users many of the functions available from Akai's MPC range, or "music production controllers", using the iPad 2 for display as well as sideline features that don't require a physical input.

Like the other models in the MPC range the FLY features a four by four grid of velocity-sensitive pads used to trigger drum sounds and samples.

Drop beats, not your iPad

The double hinged case allows the MPC Fly and iPad 2 to be used in an upright laptop format, laid out flat or even folded back on itself.

The MPC Fly app allows users to sequence four tracks simultaneously and has a sound library of samples and drum kits built in.

There are also built-in effect to play with, including delay, bit crusher and master compressor/limiter.

You can add new samples with the iPad's mic or 3.5mm socket, as well as from your iPod library using a turntable interface.

Designed to be portable the MPC Fly has a rechargeable battery and weighs in at a very reasonable 0.92kg – much lighter than a cello.

If you want to see what can be done on the MPC Fly's bigger brother with a set of nimble fingers (and a woolly hat), watch AraabMuzik at work.

The Akai MPC Fly is out now for £159. Ba-dum-tshhhhh.

The Queen's traditional Christmas speech will be available to download as a free ebook from the Kindle store this year for the first time.

The upcoming Christmas Day broadcast will be available as a transcript for anyone with a Kindle device or app after the speech is made.

Plus, Amazon is offering all 59 of the previous speeches from Her Majesty, including the famous 'annus horribilis' speech in 1992.

Royal transcripts

"Millions of people across the UK, and the world, wait with anticipation to hear The Queen's Christmas Broadcast and we're delighted to be able to make transcripts of Her Majesty's annual addresses, past and present, available to download for free in less than 60 seconds," said Gordon Willoughby, Director, Kindle EU.

"Many people will be unwrapping Kindles on Christmas Day and now Kindle readers, new and old, will be able to read The Queen's words for years to come."

The Queen has long been an early adopter of technology, sending her first email in March 1976 and having more than quarter of a million followers on the official British Monarchy twitter feed.

The multi-talented iPad was just as essential to the rise of the ebook as the dedicated Kindle e-reader, according to one ebook conversion company.

Jouve, which specialises in converting books to digital formats and is one of only two Apple approved conversion houses for the iBookstore, reckons that both devices were equally important to digital reading's success, despite the low-cost Kindle's specialisation.

When asked which device had greater impact on the take up of ebooks, Jouve President and CEO Pierre-Vincent Debatte said, "I hate to say it, but I'm going to have to sit on the fence regarding this issue."

"I'd have to argue that it's a combination of the two devices which has really spurred on the growth in ebook sales."

Comfy fence

"There was always going to be a tipping point that was reached when affordable tablets, reader and multifunction devices allowed customers to take their whole collection of books with them in one practical device," he continued.

"Sony was one of the early leaders in the ebook world, but the Kindle and the iPad have had a much more recent impact, both in terms of sales and notoriety."

Content with content

What it all comes down to, says Debatte, is content. He thinks manufacturers can put all the digital bells and whistles they like on devices but if the content isn't up to scratch, they won't have a hit on their hands.

"Good content speaks for itself. Of course there are a huge number of potential display options available with ebooks (text size, fonts etc.) that can really improve the reading experience, and there's certainly massive scope for enriched and enhanced content.

"But at the end of the day readers are interested in good content first and foremost: any enhancement has to come as a corollary to that."

And is there a future for the ad-supported ebook which Amazon currently provides in the US but is yet to make its way across the pond?

"People forget that paperbacks very often used to contain print adverts in some markets, and still do in others, so that is certainly a future model. As we've seen from the ad-supported Kindle, readers are happy to tolerate advertising if it does not obstruct their experience of the book."

The new £89 Amazon Kindle topped the sales list on its busiest ever day, with the ebook reader racking up its highest one day sales on Cyber Monday last week.

According to figures published by Amazon, the UK webstore saw phenomenal sales for the Kindle – with the new keyboard-less offering clearly hitting the present-worthy price window.

"History tells us that the busiest online shopping day is the first Monday in December and this year has followed that trend," said Amazon UK's MC Christopher North.

Stand-out product

"This year, Cyber Monday saw the most items ever ordered in a single day with Kindle being the stand-out product that looks set to appear under the most Christmas trees this festive season."

Of course, one of Amazon's most high-profile offerings is not available in the UK, with the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet UK release date still a mystery.

When and if it does arrive, the level of interest in the Kindle Fire is clearly mounting.

With the Kindle selling well in the UK, and the hoo-ha around the HP TouchPad firesale there is clearly an appetite for low-cost devices in Britain, and that is likely to be, ahem, tapped into.

It has been confirmed that Asda will be selling the Kobo ebook reader along with WHSmith in the UK, with the latter welcoming the move.

WHSmith has responded to the growing threat of Amazon's Kindle to its book selling by heavily pushing the low-cost Kobo device.

And it believes that Asda's decision to sell the reader will be a boon rather than a drawback as it looks to hold off Amazon.

Supportive

"We are very supportive of Kobo extending their UK retail presence, which will help them to establish themselves as a major UK brand," WHSmiths told The Bookseller.

Amazon, of course, has enjoyed huge success with the Kindle, and the ebook is growing exponentially on the back of the increased volume of low cost ebook readers – including the likes of the Nook and Kobo.

The online market giant is now expanding its Kindle brand into tablets with the Amazon Kindle Fire where it can bring in media sales for movies and TV along with Apps and also take advantage of those people who have built up Kindle libraries of books.

Asda's rival Tesco currently sells Kindles, and it's fair to say that the opening salvos of the ebook wars are becoming a distant memory.

Hot on the heels of its Kobo ereader launch last month, WHSmith has unveiled the Kobo Vox, a colour touchscreen ereader complete with Wi-Fi connectivity and fairly palatable price tag.

It's almost impossible not to draw comparisons to Amazon's Kindle Fire; both big up their ereader credentials, offer a 7-inch screen, run on Android, have similar apps and come with relatively low tablet prices.

The Kobo Vox's 7-inch screen is touted as anti-glare, so you should be able to read comfortably even in bright sunlight and if your peepers get tired, there are 42 font sizes to choose between.

WHSmiths is also keen to point out that Kobo is Facebook's only official ereading partner so if you're desperate to share your love of Twilight or boast about how far through Game of Thrones you are, it could be the reader-cum-tablet for you.

From the ashes

It's not quite so heavily customised as the Kindle Fire, so you don't have to go through Amazon's curated app store and have access to more Android apps.

With 8GB of storage, expandable memory and Wi-Fi connectivity, it's not exactly going to take top spot in our best tablets in the world list (we do have one, you know), but the WHSmith Kobo Vox could be one of the best bargain slabs.

One thing the Vox does have over the Kindle Fire is its UK availability: the Kobo Vox UK release date is today and you can nab it from WHSmith shops or online with a UK price of £169.99.

Amazon's US top 100 electronics sales list has shown just how powerful its Kindle brand, with the all but the top offering made up of the various flavours of ebook reader, and the Kindle Fire tablet taking top slot with a bullet.

There was little doubt that the newly announced Kindle family would sell well, but even pre-orders have taken the rankings by storm.

It is Amazon's Android tablet the Kindle Fire which dominates; a $200 price point is seen as the key factor, and it looks as if the internet giant has got a smash hit on its hands.

Thrift

Second place goes to the new entry-level special offer Kindle at $79 – with the thrift-seeker's ebook reader clearly catching the eye.

The more expensive Kindle Touch offerings are at positions three (Wi-Fi only) and four (3G), and the newly reduced $99 dollar old style Kindle – now called Kindle Keyboard is up to number five in the sales charts.

UK Kindle

In the UK, the only new Kindle to be announced for sale is the keyboard-less new-style Kindle priced at £89 – and it is in at number one, with the £109 Kindle Keyboard Wi-Fi only at number two and the 3G keyboard version at three.

We are still haranguing Amazon UK for a UK release date and prices for the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire but the company has steadfastly refused to give us one just yet.

That almost certainly suggests that the UK will not get the first generation products in 2011.

Sony has unveiled a 6-inch eReader – with the Sony Reader Wi-Fi PRS-T1 bringing an enhanced touchscreen and, for Harry Potter fans, a Pottermore special edition.

The Sony Reader Wi-Fi PRS-T1 weighs in at just 168 grams and is 8.9mm thick.

It also brings a one month battery life, is available in three colours (black, white and red) and will allow borrowing from local libraries.

"Enjoying your favourite book is even more of a pleasure with the advanced Dual Touchscreen. E InkPearl electronic paper displays a clear, glare-free, high contrast image that's easy to read for hours, even in direct sunlight," explains Sony.

Swipe

"Touch the screen to choose a book. Swipe a finger to turn the page, or zoom in and out by pinching your fingers together or apart. Tap on a word and hold to find its meaning from two built-in English language dictionaries," it adds.

"Words can also be translated to and from English using ten built-in translation dictionaries. You can even write notes on the page or highlight text with a finger or the supplied stylus – just like a real book."

Potty

Another USP for the Reader Wi-Fi PRS-T1 is the Harry Potter tie-up, which will see buyers get a voucher that will allow readers to download the first book from Pottermore.

"Sony's first offer in its collaboration with J.K. Rowling's eagerly anticipated Pottermore website (www.pottermore.com) is a specially-created limited edition of Reader Wi-Fi (PRS-T1) which includes a voucher that enables Harry Potter fans to download the first Harry Potter eBook title, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, from Pottermore.

"Pottermore, a unique website which builds an exciting and immersive online experience around the Harry Potter books and is the exclusive retailer of the Harry Potter digital eBooks, is partnered by Sony."

The Sony Reader Wi-Fi PRS-T1 UK release date is October 2011.

Amazon's latest financial results have underlined the rude health of the internet giant, with sales of the Kindle ereader 'accelerating'.

Although net income fell to 41 cents a share year on year, Amazon's quarterly results were better than analysts had predicted and sales have soared by 51 per cent compared to 2010.

Amazon stated that the Kindle ebook reader has been a key seller, although it did not drill down into figures besides saying that the sales accelerated compared to the first quarter of this year.

Innovation driving

"Low prices, expanding selection, fast delivery and innovation are driving the fastest growth we've seen in over a decade," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

"Kindle 3G with Special Offers has quickly become our bestselling Kindle… Customers love the convenience of a 3G reader - no hunting for or paying for Wi-Fi hotspots. Amazon picks up the tab for the 3G wireless, so you have no monthly payments or annual contracts."

Amazon also pointed to the launch of Kindle Textbook rental and the 950,000 books now available on the Kindle store as boosting the ereader's success.

Sony is set to launch a new ereader in the coming weeks, according to Sony's vice president of digital reading, Phil Lubell.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Lubell confirmed that the new ereaders would come with hardware and software improvements in August, although he didn't specify what either would be.

Sony hasn't released a reader since September 2010, when it busted out its Sony Reader Touch complete with touchscreen.

Readability

Amazon is rumoured to be hard at work on a touchscreen version of its massively successful Kindle reader, so we look forward to seeing just what additions Sony will include to stay one step ahead of the potamological retailer.

Lubell did give a bit of a clue on pricing, however, hinting that the new ereaders will aim to stay in a similar range to the current ones (£130 - £150).

"We think there will still be a market for dedicated readers as long as tablets remain in the $500 price range," he said.

Sony's ebook tech will also be making its way to the upcoming Sony S1 and S2 tablet devices.

Google has announced the release of the first e-reader that comes with the Google eBooks platform on board.

The iriver Story HD is the first e-reader on which you can buy books directly through Google's eponymous eBooks platform.

Hitting the US on 17 July, the e-reader will be sold through Target – but it's not clear if the reader will be heading to the UK any time soon.

eLook book

But, while there's a definite possibility that the iriver Story HD won't head to the UK, another eBooks integrated reader probably will, with Pratip Banerji, product manager of Google Books noting that we should "stay tuned for more Google eBooks-integrated devices to come."

We hope we're not left waiting too long, because direct access to the Google eBooks store via Wi-Fi would be so much more convenient than having to download anything we fancy reading to a computer and then connecting the e-reader via USB.

The only other option at present is to access Google eBooks through the usually-awful e-reader web browser; a painful experience at the best of times, and particularly if you're going on a flight or the Underground and lose internet access.

All the added hassle means we're more likely than not to simply skip browsing Google's three million free ebooks, and that's a crying shame.

Google is also opening up the Google Books APIs to device manufactuers, so they can tinker with the eBook Store to meet their own needs; it also allows users to store their ebook library in the cloud and access the collection from a different device, including smartphones and tablets – much as you can with Amazon's Kindle apps.

Barnes & Noble has revealed its latest Nook e-reader, featuring an e-ink touchscreen and one single, lone button.

Dubbed the Simple Touch Reader, the Wi-Fi only gizmo features a 6-inch monochrome touchscreen and two months of battery life from a single charge.

"The Kindle 3 has 38 buttons. That's 37 more than the new Nook," William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble, announced at the launch, adding that it was aimed at "those turned off by buttons, keyboards and complexity."

Both have stupid names, though

Nook Friends, a new feature developed for the Simple Touch Reader, allows you to see what your friends are reading, borrow and lend books, and recommend things to your contacts.

Which all sounds very handy, but it's the opposite of useful to those of us outside America as the Nook remains a US only product for now, with no word on plans to export the reader to the UK's fair shores.

The pocket-sized e-reader is no doubt intended to force another nail into the humble paperback's coffin, particularly with its alleged two-month battery life about which B&N was so keen to shout.

But paperbacks never need recharging; it's just not a war that the e-reader can win.

Magellan has made a return to the UK market, bringing with it five new handheld GPS navigation devices.

You may guess from the name that the eXplorist range is intended for ramblers and orienteerers and dogwalkers and other outdoorsy types, who can make good use of the high-sensitivity GPS.

The handheld gadgets come with handy handles so you can hold them easily as you traverse the wilds of Yorkshire or wherever.

Ramblers unite!

There's more going on here than just navigation though; all gadgets in the range feature a 3-inch touchscreen, 3.2MP camera with autofocus which allows you to capture geo-referenced images and videos, electronic compass and barometric altimeter.

Top of the range is the eXplorist 710 which offers off-road navigation as well, while the Magellan eXplorist GC is a dedicated GPS device for geocaching; a GPS treasure hunt game which we understand was quite popular in some years ago.

Completing Magellan's relaunch line up is the iPhone ToughCase; a £180 iPhone case that offers enhanced GPS and waterproofs the handset. For £180, it might be worth considering just leaving the iPhone at home.

None of the Magellan line up comes particularly cheap, with the eXplorist GC the cheapest model at £180, theeXplorist 710 at £499.99 and everything else sitting somewhere in between.

iPad 2: One month on

It's possible to both love and hate something at the same time.

Cats for example. You love them because they're cuddly and cute, but you hate them because they urinate on the carpet, claw your curtains and puke on your doorstep.

The iPad 2 is a bit like that. It bestows you with the three p's - power, pleasure and prestige - whilst simultaneously holding back the features that could have made it the best consumer electronics product of all time.

So one month (and a bit) after the UK launch of the iPad 2, what's our long term verdict?

• iPad 2 review
• iPad 2 3G review

There's no doubt that the iPad 2 is a darn sight nicer than the original model. It's slimmer, it's lighter, it's got more grunt and it's got two, albeit pathetically mediocre, cameras.

With regards to those slight cosmetic changes, it's easy to overlook them. But it's only when you've been using iPad 2 for a while and then pick up an original model that you realise just how bulky and heavy the sodding thing is.

A lot of iPad 2 apps require you to be able to wield the device in one hand, something that's a lot more difficult to do with the original model – especially if you're trying to support it primarily with your thumb (which you are forced to do when holding it with the screen facing downwards).

So that's a big thumbs up for the aesthetic and ergonomic changes – on this score, we wouldn't swap iPad 2 even for 2 iPad 1s.

Let us also pay tribute to the increase in power of iPad 2 with its dual-core processor. Launching and running apps is a lot smoother now. Even though you're only saving fractions of a second at a time, the end user experience just feels a lot more slick.

Apps like Garage Band can be rather clunky on the first iPad, while they run smooth as you like on iPad 2.

And thirdly, there's those cameras. Don't get us wrong, we're very grateful for them. Cameras open up a whole new avenue for developers to, er, develop in. There are already boat loads of cool camera-related apps out there, from the throw-away fun of PocketBooth to the genuinely useful Word Lens.

However, a 0.7MP rear-facing camera. Really, Apple? Really? It's just an atrocious effort, even more so when you consider there's an Android tablet floating around out there (somewhere) with an 8MP camera.

Certainly, resolution isn't the be-all and end-all, but it's still quite important, right?

See full-res image

The iPad 2 is, in some ways, able to capture some decent images – but only when viewing on the device's own display. Stick those pictures up on a TV, a computer monitor or print them out and they're immediately exposed.

We don't want to use the iPad to take our high-res holiday snaps, but how easy would it have been to put a slightly better sensor in there?

Gaming

Personally, I've never been much of a hardcore gamer. A casual one certainly, but my short attention span means I rarely complete a game on any platform.

This makes the iPad 2 the perfect games console for me. It's just brilliant.

The touchscreen interface forces games developers to make their titles easy to pick up and play. It can also make you feel a lot more engaged as you're interacting directly with the game itself. Add that to a raft of excellent games, many free, many others reasonably priced, and there you've got something to fill those 5 minute ad breaks when watching telly.

Gaming on the iPad was excellent. But gaming on the iPad 2 is even better.

iPad 2 vs Android

And finally, we come to the battle between iPad 2 and the Android 3.0 tablets of this world. You may not have ever seen one, but they are out there, somewhere - honestly.

We've played with lots of them, and even though they're all slightly flawed in their own unique ways, we've liked them all. Honeycomb is a fantastic OS.

It may not quite have the polish of iOS 4.3, but what it does do is expose your inability to make the iPad 2 your own, unique device.

That's the thing with our iPad, we don't really feel that it's ours - it's Steve's.

If we're going to pay £400 plus for a tablet, we want it to be definitively ours. We want to be able to customise it beyond recognition. We want to be able to install all manner of different live wallpapers, different keyboards, UI modifications etc. And we want it to perform seamlessly no matter how many of these modifications we've made.

We don't want to be told what we can and can't do with it, and what media formats we can and can't play.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, after one month with it, we really hate the iPad 2. We hate it because it imposes limitations on you. It shackles you to iTunes. It's got a crap camera. But most of all we hate it because we just can't help loving it so much.

It's the drunk, wife-beating husband of our gadget collection. It loves us and provides for us, while being totally uncompromising in its abusive 'our way or the highway' attitude towards us.

There's absolutely no question that the iPad 2 is the most complete, functional and usable tablet currently on the market. We've tested them all, and it's simply the best. It may be only a small step forward from the original model, but it's still a decent step in the right direction.

At some point, the enormous potential of Android 3.0 is going to bear fruit. But until then, we're just going to continue to allow our cute little kitty to leave dead mice in strange places, leave muddy pawprints on our clean bed sheets and make bad things happen in our noses.

It's worth it because he's just so awesome to have around.

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Owning an iOS device can be a bittersweet experience. The sweet bit is the device itself; the bitter bit is iTunes.

If iTunes were any more bloated, satellite channels would be running shock-horror documentaries about The World's Fattest MP3 Player. So it's nice to see Spotify offering an alternative, even if that alternative will almost certainly be shut down after about ten seconds.

The big news is that Spotify can now replace iTunes, or at least it can for straightforward playlists. For apps, smart playlists and other bits and bobs, including any copy-protected iTunes purchases you have floating about, you'll still need to use Captain Bloaty.

There are other features too - instant bankruptcy thanks to the new "buy playlist" feature, which converts playlists into purchased MP3s, a mobile app for free as well as premium users - but the iPod connectivity is the biggie, especially because it can sync wirelessly.

Wouldn't it be great if iTunes did that too?

Sync or swim

The Spotify update hasn't made it to my machine yet - it's being rolled out later today - but it'll be interesting to see if Spotify's take on iOS syncing is faster than Apple's. I suspect it may be, because it's only doing one thing: music.

If you're anything like me, your iTunes library is enormous, because it contains much more than music: there's everything from home videos and family photos to sat-nav apps and Hollywood blockbusters in there, and on my machine at least iTunes makes ominous creaking noises every time I buy a new song.

I know the arguments against wireless sync - transferring a twenty-gig iTunes library when you sync your brand new device would take an eternity, Apple can't be bothered adding it - but it's still a major iTunes omission, especially when Apple happily lets us update apps and buy new music over Wi-Fi and 3G.

iTunes is all over the place. On the one hand it's missing useful features such as wireless sync; on the other it's trying to be a record shop and a video shop and a software shop and an app manager and a home video library and a photo synchroniser and a ringtone organiser and a home screen organiser and and and and and. It needs a rethink.

What I'd like to see happen is Apple saying, "Bah, those pesky Spotify kids! They've made iTunes look crappy!" and Steve Jobs starting to taser the iTunes team until they come up with something better.

What I suspect will happen is that Steve Jobs will start tasering Spotify - metaphorically at least.

How long before there's an iOS update that just happens to break the Spotify sync?

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For all the talk of iPad killers over the last year or so, there's no such thing.

Rather than iPad killers we've seen a lot of iPad-a-likes, disappointing devices that have been designed to do much the same as the iPad does. Only one firm is spanking Apple in the portable media market, and it doesn't even make tablets.

Yet.

I'm talking about Amazon, whose Kindle is the most Apple-y thing I've owned that Apple didn't actually make. The buying experience, the packaging, the process of buying books and reading them is all Apple all the way: it just works, brilliantly.

• Amazon Kindle Fire: what you need to know

Amazon understands what the iPad-a-likes don't: it's not about horsepower, or a pretty case, or cutting-edge anything. It's about delivering an experience that delights people, and having an enormous amount of stuff people can download to their shiny new toy.

I can't wait to see what it does with a tablet.

Here comes trouble

The Amazon Kindle Fire is incoming. According to Digitimes, Taiwanese notebook firm Quanta Computer "has recently received OEM orders from Amazon for its reported tablet PC and the device will also receive full support [from] E Ink holdings for supplying touch panels." So there you go. A touch-screen Kindle tablet.

If you look at the reviews of iPad rivals, they tend to fall down in two areas. They deliver a disappointing user experience, or they don't have much content, or both. We know that Amazon can nail the user experience, and we know that Amazon has got a really big hard disk with lots of things on it - including an Android App Store- and a fast, simple payment system millions of people trust.

Apps, music, movies, books, newspapers... if it can be digitised, Amazon delivers it, and it delivers it exceptionally well.

The Kindle's web browser is crappy, sure, and the music player is basic to say the least, but people don't buy Kindles to browse the web or listen to MP3s. They buy it for the thing it's absolutely brilliant at: buying, downloading and reading books. If Amazon can make a tablet that's as good with music, movies and Angry Birds, it'll sell millions.

Where other rivals' devices take the iPad as a starting point, their sales pitch essentially "hey! Buy our tablet! It's like an iPad, honest!", Amazon could take a completely different angle.

"You thought the Kindle was awesome?" Amazon could ask. "Wait until you see this!"

Sales of ebooks have doubled in the US according to the Association of American Publishers, as physical book sales plummeted.

For those that hoped that ebooks would ever challenge for supremacy, the AAP's January figures may be difficult to take, with figures showin g a whopping 115.8 per cent hike year on year.

That takes total sales of digital books from $32.4 million (c£20m) in 2010 to $69.9 million (£43.1) at the start of this year.

Paper (pur)chase

The news is a little grim for physical books, with Adult hardback sales down by 11.3 per cent and sales of Adult paperbacks down by nearly a fifth (19.7%) from January 2010.

In the children and young adult section sales of hardbacks were down by significantly less, but paperback sales dropped by 17.7 per cent.

The success of devices like the Kindle, along with tablets like Apple's iPad, have significantly increased the popularity of ebooks, making digital copies accessible and quickly available.

TechRadar is still hoping that purchase of physical books will include a digital copy going forward, so we can have our cake and then store it on our shelves in alphabetical order.

Apple has insisted that the iPad subscription service being launched with The Daily from News Corp. will be available for other publishers "very soon."

Apple's vice president of internet service, Eddie Cue, was asked about the availability of the brand new subscription model and when it would be rolled out to other people who wanted to offer magazines and content for iPad.

"It's available today on The Daily, said Cue. "An announcement will be made very soon for other publications.

"We have a great relationship with publishers and thousands [of publications] are available already andsubscription is only going to help get more customers."

Welcomed, eventually

The news will be welcomed by many publishers, who are keen to have a more integrated subscription method that makes selling periodicals easier.

With The Daily being a US only publication, it will be interesting to see if the model is opened up soon enough for someone other than News Corp. to get out a subscription service for the iPad first in the UK.

In the meantime, The Daily is being given a major head start in getting subscribers, with other publishers facing a frustrating wait until they can launch their own rivals.