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Originally Posted by LucidDreams
Unlike the HD DVD vs Blu-ray battle, Kobo/B&N/Sony all support a open standards eBook format. Amazon is the one holding out by using it's own proprietary eBook format. Not having ePub support is an issue, you can't get books from public libraries. For some that's a huge deal breaker.
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I think the main concern is the DRM, not the ebook format. Both forms of DRM are proprietary, just one is licensed by more places.
Libraries hopefully won't be a concern much longer if the Amazon/Overdrive press release turns out like we hope.
ePub as format is richer than mobi, I'm told, and I don't question it, and true ePub is an open standard and mobi is owned by Amazon, but in practice, it just doesn't seem make a bit of difference to most people. For the vast majority of content, the formats look the same, are both widely available and are easily inter-convertable. You are seeing the answer to "What if they threw a format war and no one showed up?"
Now as for what the impact will be in the future, as people build libraries, laws are clarified and ereaders are replaced, I can only put my guess against yours.
I think more people who use ereaders are tech savvy than you may think.
Calibre has been downloaded over a million times. Maybe someone who knows can tell us how many times the 'tools' set has been downloaded.
I think the tech savvy base is still probably larger than the tech-illiterate base, though it is clearly growing. I still don't think format or the current 'locked into one store' perception is an real issue now or will be an issue going forward.
I'll offer my standard bet: Meet you back here in a few years. Loser buys the Dr. Pepper.