[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Amazon hoped to create a monopoly by getting the Kindle and Kindle Store up soon enough to draw everyone to them before other device-store combinations were ready. Needless to say, it didn't work, but Amazon still hopes to present the superior experience, and bring everybody over to their side of the Force.

ePub's being adopted by every-friggin'-body else has effectively thrown a monkey-wrench into that machine. Enough other bookstores have comparable experiences to the Kindle store, and comparable (or--yes!--better) readers, to present viable alternatives to Amazon. And as most people prefer more choices, a market that allows you to buy the reader you want from multiple sellers, and buy books from multiple sellers, is more attractive than having only one books source for a reader that doesn't read other sellers' books.

Slowly but surely, consumers will turn a cold shoulder to Amazon as they realize they don't need Amazon to read ebooks... they have more and equal choices elsewhere. Sooner or later, Amazon will accept this as fact, and despite a healthy business of their own, will act to prevent their being marginalized down the road.

It has been pointed out elsewhere that Amazon has a tendency to announce changes and additions to its services at just the right moment to detract from the announcements of other vendors and sellers. I imagine that, at some point, Amazon will add ePub readability to their Kindles (alongside their own formats), and wait for some other vendor to announce some new and improved service (live interactive share-your-bookshelf apps, maybe?) to strategically reveal their acceptance of ePub and take the wind out of some vendor's sails. (How soon they do this will dictate how much of an effect they will have on said announcement.)

Then they will go back to depending on their product value and interactive customers to sell product, rather than relying on hardware and format lock-in.