[Anak]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

Here again, most of the people who buy their reader will never shop outside the Kobo store. For them, the statement is true as written; they buy books at Kobo, sync regularly, and their status is shared between devices and apps.

Sideloading's a wonderful feature, but it's far from being the main (or even a major) use case. Yes, I'd like to see that change, as I hate ecosystem lock-in - but my preferences are not reality, and I must be careful not to confuse the two.

All I was saying this synchronization feature is misleading.
But, okay, I'm not a purist per se and that's why I excluded sideloading:

Originally Posted by Anak

I could go a step further by saying every item bought in the Kobo shop and stored on Kobos servers. As you can't upload non-Kobo bought books it is clear that those can not be synced.

Originally Posted by cybmole

there are several 3rd party epub reader apps that support sync between devices… -working via cloud storage apps like dropbox.

those solutions should work for all formats.

… In what circumstance is this "feature" a genuine benefit ?

but sure, I could be done easily. If Kobo created a cloud app that works with Dropbox or other cloud service. Just like they created a Pocket app.

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

Here again, most of the people who buy their reader will never shop outside the Kobo store.

That is probably true for Canada and some other territories where the market is dominiated by one party that utilizes its own proprietary book format.
I guess it's true for the English language markets and territories. You can buy everything in the same shop without worrying about book formats.

For books not written in English you can shop around at many other local retailers as long as the sell their books in the industry standard epub format. For example, in The Netherlands 80% of all digital books are sold through bol.com.

I am active on a few non-technical book related forums aimed at average users in The Netherlands and Germany. The topics are mainly about book titles and similar chit chat.
Most members (over 90% but problably over 95%) are sideloading all books bought in the Kobo store on their Kobo readers. The never heard of "kepub", and don't use Kobo software (Kobo Desktop or apps). They just put their books on their readers the way they are accustomed to. Here: they use the instructions to put books on their readers before Kobo entered these markets. Meaning they connect ereaders to a computer and use either Adobe Digital Editons software or use Microsoft Explorer to drag and drop books to a connected ereader. Or use Calibre to do this.

Now, Having said that, I will try to not to respond to this subject any further.