Sony go with ePUB. Close to a standard now?
I know this is old news but it is starting to get interesting now. With google taking on the ePUB format, Barnes and Noble already using it and now Sony moving to it there are Rumours that Apple will go with it also.
What this means is that everyone that matters except Amazon will be using this single file format. So that when you buy an eBook from any of these ePUB vendors you can use it on any device you want that supports it. If you buy a Kindle you need to buy from Amazon and those books won’t work anywhere else.
Amazon is currently the biggest retailer of ebooks and the hardware (Kindle) but will this continue to be the case. Their hardware is no longer special or compelling however they do appear to have the largest single source of ebooks for now. If you combine all the other players in the market however they will rapidly overtake Amazon in my view.
For those of you who don’t know, ePUB is an open standard xml format for books. It doesn’t have any built in DRM but does support third party DRM. currently Adobe’s DRM seems to be the most popular. We just have to hope that a DRM format battle doesn’t start between the publishers now unless the hardware will support multiple DRM standards concurrently.
Worth Reading
http://gigaom.com/2009/08/13/with-sonys-epub-move-adobe-wins/
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