Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I think, personally, that to talk about a single "winner" is rather odd. There's pretty much no area of the market that only has a single player in it. The eBook market will probably shake down to a few big players, and a number of smaller providers with more specialist offerings, but there's really no reason at all to suppose that there will be any one single "winner".
There's absolutely no reason that someone can't launch an ePub-based Reader with an online bookstore and wireless delivery.
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I think there needs to be a winner in the format war--especially if we're going to have DRM and thus can't easily change formats.
There's not really room for more than one format--just like HD-DVD died off as Blu Ray won the HD-Format war. People aren't going to want to own multiple devices. Same with MP3--even with the success of the iPod and iTunes, MP3 has more or less won out now that iTunes is DRM free and you can covert anything from AAC to MP3 within iTunes.
I think there will be multiple devices and multiple e-book stores for 100% sure going forward. But eventually they'll be selling the same format and/or non-drm'ed easily converted files so that users with any device can access their books--just like I can now buy from iTunes with no problems which I couldn't before since neither of my Creative MP3 players can play AAC files.