Our friends at
JkOnTheRun are fans of e-book reading, and it's always interesting to hear what a Tablet PC guru has to say about the topic. Today,
James Kendrick shares that he is giving MobiPocket a try on his new Blackberry phone, and he finds it to be quite good.
MobiPocket becomes more and more interesting each day as we hear news of their expansion into the market. Everything from the iLiad to the anticipated Amazon Kindle, to the Blackberry and more. With the importance of cross platform compatibility and with MobiPocket format's expected staying power after the acquisition by Amazon, MobiPocket is likely to win more and more fans.
It's interesting that given its market position, there has been proportionally less discussion about MobiPocket in the forums. Possibly, that has to do with the concerns and mistrust of the proprietary nature of the format, as well as the perceived cost and complexity of the document generation tools. These were the reasons I did not pursue MobiPocket further when I first took a look at it many years ago (as well as having limited free memory on my PDA to use for eReader alternatives). But, I suspect that there will be a lot more of us following in James' footsteps in the future unless we see the Adobe Digital Editions and the related new IDPF format adopted widely and quickly.
Interestingly, despite not being able to use eReader on his Blackberry, James still says that he is cautiously considering the move away from eReader. As best I can figure, it's not only because he already has a lot of eReader e-books, but because he knows that he is likely to be using a totally new device in a matter of months! Surely those guys can consistently bring us great information about so many devices partly because they can't stick with any one device for long!
In fact, I think we need to propose a new measure of time for those of us that are always eager for upgrades to newer and better devices. In the animal world, we measure time in "dog years", which pass at 7 times the speed of regular years. I think that "JkOTR tech years" is appropriate for crazy tech adopters. It represents a ratio of about 10 tech years per regular person year, i.e. it reflects the acquisition of 10 different new devices in the time a "regular person" has contentedly kept a single device!
So the question of the day is where MobiPocket fits into the future. eReader was once strong, but seems like it is following in Palm's footsteps and is content to milk the revenue still coming in from past achievements. Will MobiPocket become a leader, or will they be another in the forest of players in the market? With Amazon's deep pockets behind them, it appears to be as simple as asking how determined they are to make MobiPocket dominate.