Quote:
Originally Posted by TimW
There are several million Kindle owners. You don't imagine there would be anger and legitimate feelings of betrayal at suddenly being stuck with an orphaned, obsolete product? Amazon's ebook business might very well be doomed because of it. No, that's not hyperbole. The window of opportunity for Amazon to change formats with a minimum amount of chaos has long been closed. What legitimate economic sense would there be in changing formats at this late stage? There is none.
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Amazon
already support two formats. And have already silently converted books from one format to another.
They could easily start supporting ePub rendering on new Kindles, while still supporting their two existing formats.
For 99% of Amazon's customers, their ebooks aren't Mobipokcet format, but Kindle format. If the Kindle format suddenly becomes Topaz, Mobipocket or ePub instead of (as at present) Topaz or Mobipocket, they simply won't notice.
And over a few years, most new books will be ePub format, with automatic conversion to Mobipocket for the dwindling proportion of older Kindles that can only render Mobipocket/Topaz.
Not really a problem at all.