[BadBilly]

Well, Amazon really pushed e-readers in a big way when they introduced the Kindle. As they were already a huge book retailer, they had the relationships to get the content that was needed to make buying such a device worthwhile to a reader. Anyone who visited Amazon from anywhere in the world saw ads for Kindles, increasing awareness even in markets where it was not available. As the Kindle took off, there were often media stories about ebook reading, often drawing from US sources, that strongly featured Kindles.

Furthermore, most countries did not have a domestic Amazon store and therefore had to put up with currency exchange, shipping, and customs fees when buying from Amazon, so buying a Kindle or other physical objects was not always a good deal. Buying e-books also had currency exchange to consider. Now, more countries have an Amazon store, so that is not so much of an issue.

Kobo was a response to the Kindle involving several brick-and-mortar booksellers. As you may have noticed, that is a business that is in trouble. So, not only did they not have as much clout as Amazon in getting content from publishers and getting the discounts, they didn't have the huge cashflow that Amazon has. This cashflow allowed Amazon to not care about making money on the readers and not care too much about making money on the books.

Amazon made it very easy for people in the USA to get the books they purchase onto their devices, something Kobo could not do.

Now, outside the USA, the story is something different. Kobo has good market presence in Canada (a primary investor in the company was Canada's near-monopoly book retailer) and in other countries where large book sellers were partnered with it.

Kobo also has an advantage outside the USA because most public libraries in those countries only lend out ebooks in epub format. In Canada, for example, Kindles are for people who want to buy every book they read. Kobos (and my beloved Sony T1) are for people who want to borrow library books.

Kobos also allow one to sideload a bunch of public domain books from Project Gutenberg and the MobileRead library for free. There may be Kindle formatted versions of those works, but, if you're only going to have one device for books you buy, books you borrow, and books you download from public domain sites, you'll want a Kobo (or my beloved Sony T1).

Here in Canada, for example, Amazon's Kindle is still well-known and we now have our own store here, so buying from Amazon is easier. You do see some Kindles here. Like Apple products, they are popular with people who have lots of money to spend and are technically clueless. It very easily parts them from their money and gives them their books. Gotta hand it to them on that.

As we see in some comments here, Amazon is counting on its walled-garden to keep people who have spent big on mobi format books from switching (though it's not that hard to do).

So, that's my assessment of how Amazon got a lot of mindshare in the USA: being early, being ubiquitous, by making it very easy to buy their product.

Now, if you ask me which is better, I'd say it depends on what you want from your reader and reading experience. Kindle has some tempting hardware, but I won't by it as it doesn't work with my public library and I'd have to convert all my epubs. Also, I don't buy a lot of books. Between public library and public domain, I do pretty well. My Sony PRS-T1 still works fine, I have a nice case with light, plays audio, and has an SD-card slot. I also love the multiple dictionaries for foreign languages (French to English, Italian to English, German to English). They're helpful. Unfortunately, Sony is long-gone from the market because they had an undistinguished store, had to make money on their readers, and didn't have a strong retail presence anywhere that I know of (maybe Japan). If I were replacing my reader with something currently on the market, I'd probably go for a Kobo Forma. Love physical page buttons.