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It's unfortunate that all these new shops are all focusing on the store experience and not on the reading experience.
Amazon has angered a lot of customers because they do not have an open platform to all, but for those that they have opened shop to their experience is excellent. And that is why they are on ahead of the game.
While the Shortcover (Kobo) app looks very pretty it is still unusable, it's focus is cosmetic and tight integration to their store. The ebook reading experience is really bad, I've deleted the app almost as soon as I installed it.
In a not to distant future eBook stores are going to find themselves in what is known as "Commodity Hell" where the only thing that will distinguish one retailer from the other is price in service. The question is what will distinguishes Kobo from say all the other ePUB vendors? Right know Kobo has a tight integration with it's store but a very poor reading experience.
B&N, MobiPocket, and eReader/Fictionwie however has the opposite their reader is much better but their store integration is not very good. Guess which product I have installed on my phone and who I am buying from.
Kobo has a chance to capitalizing on the smartphone market and fill the void where Kobo can fill and get ahead of other companies, yet this seems to be the same old reader that was introduced earlier this year. The store integration is good enough now they need to focus on the reading experience.
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