Interesting read this thread I must say, I guess there was a lot of things that needed to be vented which is fine
As the one who started the thread I just want to say that I have now several reader Apps (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Stanza, eReader, iReader and now also Txtr) on my iPhone and using them I can buy books from different sources and read them on the same device, i.e. my iPhone. I don't really care so much where I buy books from and in which format, it is the availability and the price of the books that direct where I go. In a way very similar to with real physical books, where I go to different bookstores for the same reasons.
For me the problem is that I have been with Sony a long time and have several of their Readers, and during the years bought ~500 books from them. I would of course like to not have to scrap these books, wanting to be able to read them also on my iPhone when/if I want. This seems now possible using Txtr (although this App have some issues and would need an update), but I don't understand why Sony doesn't jump on this train also and make a reader app for the iPhone. By not doing that, they will loose customers in their book store, and even if books of course is not their main source of revenue, they must still make a profit there somewhere, if not why bother at all.
Zevs