Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
The iTunes music store currently has about 70% of the online music sales market, which in turn adds up to 25% of the overall market (this is US only btw). The next closest competitor is Amazon with 8% of the digital market. We are dealing with an ongoing process, but at least at the moment Apple is clearly dominant in music sales -- despite using a "minority" format (AAC) and, for much of its history, a proprietary DRM scheme (Fairplay).
If Amazon captures a significant percentage of the ebook sales market -- say, 40% or more -- then I see no reason to doubt that publishers will continue to convert their books to Amazon's format. I can't imagine a publisher will want to stay away from such a huge chunk of customers solely due to the cost of conversion.
Since it's unlikely that Amazon will lose market share simply based on format offerings, I see little reason why everyone else switching to ePub -- especially as long as they have unique DRM wrappers that prevent Sony books being read on the Nook, and vice versa -- will have much of an impact on Amazon.
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Sony books will be able to be read on the Nook by the end of the year. Whether the reverse is true will depend on how quickly Sony upgrades its version Adobe Mobile. I do expect that other manufacturers will update in a timely manner, resulting in a substantial number of devices on the market that are store-agnostic.
Luqman