At Wednesday’s launch of the iPad 2 in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed that 17,000 titles from Random House U.S. will now be available in Apple’s iBookstore. Titles began appearing on the iBooks app prior to the press conference.

The partnership comes as no surprise after Random House announced that it was adopting Apple’s agency pricing model Monday ” the last of the major U.S. publishing companies to do so. The pricing shift gives publishers 70 per cent of each sale, with a 30 per cent commission to retailers.

Random House Canada has no immediate plans to follow the U.S.’s lead. Senior vice president, director of marketing and corporate communications Tracey Turriff writes, “Random House of Canada’s digital terms of sale remain unchanged at this time. New commercial models in the fast changing eBook environment are constantly under review. We continue to evaluate our options and talk to all etailers as it is our mission to ensure that our authors’ books are available on all platforms to all potential customers. Our strategy is constantly evolving in the best interests both of our authors and consumers.”

Jobs said that since the iPad was launched in April 2010, customers have downloaded more than 100 million e-books from the iBookstore, with over 2,500 publishers represented.

The lighter, sleeker, faster iPad 2 will be available in Canada on March 25.