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JSWolf;
Seeing as how all the Amazon Kindle ebook formats such as KF8, AZW and AZW3 are proprietary, Amazon dropping Mobi support would kill most independent USA ebook publishers and distributors as the Amazon proprietary formats are not available to them. I have enough ebooks from Smashwords and other sources that I would hate that. Amazon holds copyright or design patents on them so far as I know. Mobi is public domain apparently as also supported by Kobo, though poorly.
I could be wrong but I suspect that less than 5% of Kindle owners use Calibre or other format conversion software, or even know of it. Even less know of the ability for emailing a .epub file, renamed as a .png file, to a Kindle reader for conversion to a Kindle compatible file format. I strongly suspect that one of the things that killed Sony was the long time that their readers did not support WiFi and direct downloading of ebook files. They were tightly tied to a computer with USB that could run the Sony reader support desktop software. This was a major advantage of Kindle readers from the first model. User convenience won, and apparently not just in the USA seeing as how Sony ceased ebook reader production worldwide shortly after withdrawing from the USA market.
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