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The exact same thing happened with the old Rocket eBook. It started with RCA owning it, then they sold out to a British company called Gemstar (which publishes "TV Guide"). They ran it a few years and had deals with Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others where you could buy all sorts of books and even magazines such as Newsweek, NY Times, etc.
The device has many good features lacking (yet) on the Sony Reader, and everybody I knew who had one loved it. Whenever I read it in a public place, always had people come up and inquire, and without fail, they were very impressed. Several of my friends bought one after seeing mine.
However, except for tiny ads in TV Guide, they never advertised it, promoted it or marketed it in any way whatsoever.
A couple of years ago they notified everybody that they were discontinuing support and there would be no way to buy books any more. Most of us loaded up on as many books as we could afford to keep reading it.
Although Gemstar insisted there was no way to load Gutenberg or other free books into the eBook, I found a way to do it, so am still using it when I want a backlighted device.
So, if they had just advertised and promoted the thing, I'm convinced they could have sold millions.
They used the excuse of giving up because there were not enough sales. Duh!
I certain hope Sony does not make the same stupid mistake.
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