Scoop recently announce partnership with Samsung in order to expand their ebook service through Samsung Android devices via eReading app available on Samsung Apps.
Based on the information at Samsung Apps website, the application eReading now supports Scoop. This eReading app is developed by Samsung as a interactive newsstand-like app for Samsung Android users, complete with magazines, tabloids and ebooks available for users to read.
I contacted Willson Cuaca, CEO of Apps Foundry (Scoop developer) and Cuaca told me that Scoop will be bundled with Samsung eReading app and will add a “eReading powered by Scoop” in it. The previous version of eReading app is now replaced by Scoop’s engine for all Samsung Android devices.
For now, Scoop-powered eReading app is only for Galaxy Note users, while the version for Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1 will soon be released and available for public use.
Previously, Scoop is exclusively targeting iPad user before finally launch a iPhone/iPod Touch app. But now, apparently they’re aggresively targeting the whole tablet/smartphone market by partnering with Samsung. Cuaca also confirms that they will be releasing a generic Android version of Scoop besided eReading which is exclusive for Samsung Android users.
As a newsstand-like app, Scoop also provides magazine, tabloids and ebooks just like the iOS version and uses Paypal as the prefered payment method although they’re looking at other alternatives in terms of payment gateway.
As I recall, Samsung is currently developing their own payment gateway called Samsung Point which uses the top-up method as an alternative to the credit card model. I must say that it’ll be very interesting to see this top-up model work for Indonesian market although it’s much easier to use credit card regardless the fact that only around 14 million credit cards were issued to Indonesian consumer.
Samsung’s movement in Indonesia is very interesting to watch, especially their approach to support Android development in Indonesia as Amir wrote. In terms of the device itself, I don’t have the accurate data, but with Android released for almost every market layer in Indonesia it’s just makes sense for them to grow significantly with Samsung as the current incumbent for Android smartphones.
In 2012, it is predicted that over 67% of phones available in the market will be smartphones. And it’s almost certain that Android will play an important role there. This opportunity is what drives Samsung and Apps Foundry (Scoop) to go into the consumer market. “Android is going to be very interesting, even if the payment system is not yet as comfortable as Apple but next year is still going to be an interesting year for Android”, said Cuaca.
Since we’re approaching the end of 2011, it’s definitely going to be interesting to see what the “mobile war” would look like next year in 2012.
