42 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections Google As of September 2011, the California company hired a Brazilian executive solely to secure content in Latin America. Although the market has been expecting a Brazilian Google Play bookstore sometime in 2012, things have been quiet in the São Paulo corporate head- quarters. The company has been trying to secure rights and renegotiate contracts with Brazilian publishers who were originally signed for the Google Book Search pro- gram. Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google Books, visited Brazil with a technical team in the rst quarter of 2011, but there is still no news as of this writing. Apple A Brazilian iTunes store opened only in December 2011, leaving 190 million Brazilians out of the music buying market for several years. Even though Brazilians are tech-savvy, and iPhones and iPads have a signi cant market share, Apple never opened a agship store in the country. As for books, a team with high-level executives came to Brazil in January 2012 to negotiate with local publishers, with the goal of beginning sales as soon as possible in a Brazilian iBookstore. As of August 2012, however, there have been no new announcements. Barnes & Noble The rm allegedly has an interest in the Brazilian market and in Portuguese content. However, no major action has yet been reported in the market. The Brazilian Catalog: Growing Steadily In August 2012, after analyzing the titles on the e-shelves of Saraiva, Amazon, and Gato Sabido, the website Revolução eBook disclosed numbers for the overall Brazilian Portuguese ebook catalog. According to the research, there are about 16,000 Portuguese ebooks for sale. This represents a huge growth in the months just since February, when the website estimated 11,000 titles. Saraiva and Gato Sabido together have close to 10,000 strong local retailer. As already mentioned, in September 2012 it announced its connection with Livraria Cultura. For 18 months before the announcement, Kobo execu- tives made regular trips from Toronto to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to establish relations. Kobo’s Brazilian connection became even stronger when it was bought by Japanese e-retailer Rakuten, which had already acquired the Brazilian IT company Ikeda. In August 2012, Kobo hired its rst Brazil-based employee. That same month, journalist Raquel Cozer of Folha de S.Paulo, the largest newspaper in the country, revealed that several domain names with the word Kobo had been registered to Livraria Cultura. Such anticipation of the company’s announcement may well indicate the enthusiasm with which Brazilians expect the advent of new players to their book market. Amazon While Kobo is often portrayed as the good guy in the Brazilian market, Amazon has confronted some skepti- cism when negotiating with local publishers. Because Brazilian book professionals follow the US market very closely and are culturally more connected to North American than to Europe, Amazon’s controversies with publishers and booksellers are well known. The fact that Amazon rarely talks to the press has also helped gener- ate a type of Amazonophobia among journalists and publishers alike. However, after more than a year of negotiations that started in early 2011, Amazon began hiring local sta in January 2012. Importantly, it secured the domain name www.amazon.com.br that August, after years of litigating and negotiating with a Brazilian IT company that already owned the domain. Despite mar- ket expectations for the Brazilian store to open in 2012, it may not actually do so until 2013. Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s VP for the Kindle operation, only visited the country for the rst time in August 2012.