Quote:
Originally Posted by TimW
"I think that once we can get rid of Mobi..." Who is "we?" The only way Mobi disappears is if 1) Amazon voluntarily kills it, which would be insane or 2) people stop purchasing Amazon books. Are either of those scenarios likely? The second one could happen but there isn't any signs of that happening yet. We'll let the market decide.  |
I don't see why Amazon voluntarily killing mobi would be insane. In fact I can see that happening quite easily.
Going purely on their technical merits epub IS a better format than mobi, I can't see how any one can refute that. Killing off mobi and supporting epub (with their own brand of drm of course) would make sense for Amazon. It would streamline the process of getting ebooks from the publishers into kindle users hands. Epub is already the defacto standard used by publishers, even in the US, even if it isn't what most people end up reading. It's why Amazon now accepts epubs directly from publishers which they then convert to mobi. This just adds unnecessary complexity and costs for Amazon.
Sure they'd need to update the kindle platform across the entire range but that's perfectly doable and I'd argue the cost savings would be worth it. Heck kindlegen even embeds the epub source files now when you use it to create a mobi file.
I think moving to epub is just a matter of time for Amazon. It would certainly be good for Kindle users, you'd get better looking books with just a simple firmware update. Can't see a downside to that really.