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Originally Posted by bhartman36
I agree with you that the MOBI/AZW format will eventually become obsolete. The ebook (at least, hardware-wise) is really just starting out. What's going to be important, I think, is what the transition to the next format looks like. Ideally, Amazon (or some other vendor) would be able to provide a device with support for both AZW and the Next Big Thing (whether that's epub or something else). But vendors won't do that unless they feel like they don't have a choice.
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I really think it's just dependent on what kind of market share the Kindle and the Amazon bookstore gets.
If it dominates like iTunes did with music, Mobi/AZW will likely stick around, just like AAC files have in iTunes. At most Amazon will just remove DRM eventually like Apple did to allow people to convert them to other formats if they so choose, while sticking with their format.
But again, it's a non-issue for me since I just get stuff I'll read once. And even if the Kindle and mobi/AZW did totally die off at some point in the future, it's easy enough to strip the DRM and convert it to some other format for use on whatever device/format took over.