Quote:
Originally Posted by wallcraft
Amazon is indirectly the driving force behind Sony and B&N getting behind Adobe ePub, and overall I think they have been good for the ebook industry. If Amazon holds its breath long enough, then publishers probably will have to go to a two formats approach and at that point they are unlikely to use the advanced features of ePub. I did not state this explicitly, but my underlying assumption was that these are a good thing. If so, it certainly would not be the first time that a technically inferior approach wins due to better marketing.
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Do you believe that the technically inferior format (by which I assume you're referring to Mobipocket, as used by Amazon?) is likely to win? Amazon are showing every sign of trying to "kill off" Mobi, as witnessed by the fact that virtually every device which previously supported Mobi DRM either has, or is in the process of, switching over to ePub.
I know the Kindle is "big" in the USA, but even with the launch of the International Kindle, the same is really not true elsewhere, and certainly not here in Europe. Here it's Sony who's the big name in the market, not Amazon, and oretty much every European eBook store (other than Mobipocket, of course) sells ePub books, not Mobi.
I think there's very little likelyhood that Mobi will "win" the format wars; ePub is already in a dominant position, and becoming more so as each new ePub-supporting device is release. I think personally that it's only a matter of time until Amazon are forced, for good commercial reasons, to support ePub.