Engadget Interviews Kobo's Michael Serbinis

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These interviews are usually content-free, but this one is worth reading. From Engadget:

Amazon's strategy has been to provide a device for the lowest possible price and use it as a platform with which to deliver content. Is that the sort of strategy that you guys are looking at as you move ahead with this acquisition?

It's absolutely been our strategy from day one. When we introduced our first e-reader, the Kindle was $300. We were the first to introduce a reader at cost with our first Kobo reader in May of 2010. We brought it to the market for $149 -- half of where everyone else was at.

Can you give numbers in terms of how many readers have been sold this year?

We don't disclose the numbers on the hardware but I can tell you that from a user base of people downloading and buying books on a weekly basis with Kobo, we've gone from just north of 2 million at the end of Christmas last year to just shy of 6 million right now.