[ricsmania]

Hi,

I have seen many people complain about lack of EPub support on the Kindle. I have been thinking about it and I think I know why this happens.

It obviously isn't for technical reasons, because companies that are 100x smaller than Amazon manufacture EPub reading devices.

Amazon wants to sell books, not book readers. The profit margin on the Kindle is probably very small, maybe even negative (i.e. subsidized), because Amazon gets its profits from the Kindle books it sells.

Kindle doesn't support EPub because if it did, customers would have no reason to buy from Amazon, they could buy books from any other store that sells them.

It's the same business model as videogames, which are cheap (subsidized) but only accept games for that platform, or cellphones, in which you buy a cheaper or even free (subsidized) phone but have to agree to pay for the service for a given amount of months.

So the reason why why Kindle doesn't and probably never will support EPub is the same reason why you can't play a PS3 game on a XBox 360.

What do you guys think?