Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
I also question the sensibility of limiting your e-book catalog to one dedicated reader. But Amazon may simply hope to wear everyone down, until only they (and their Kindle system) are left. Personally, I'd be happy if they simply wear every format down to theirs (I'd prefer a more universal format, but Mobi isn't bad), and bring down the tower of e-babel. Again, given Amazon's preference for the long-term view, I can believe this could be their plan.
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My not-very-educated guess on the reason for this is that they want to move people into the periodical content and Whispernet is pretty key for that. I'm betting it has a really high margin compared to books, especially new releases and best sellers which they're probably selling at a loss. Maybe if another company approached them with making fully Kindle store compatible hardware, they'd be open to it. Who knows?
I'd love it if they sold Mobi files, but I wonder if that gets to be an issue since they own Mobi and I seem to recall reading here that Mobi's agreement with their sellers says that they can't undercut prices. Maybe since .azw isn't directly competing with Mobi for the same devices and software users, they don't have to obey that policy. Just a guess.