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re: Odds of Sony staying in the e-book Business?
Sony is a great company in many respects, with a fine history of both innovation and "getting it right" as a fast-follower, and it's e-readers -- which once led and laid the groundwork for the industry -- can stand tall by any price, performance metric.
Leaving aside their movie division, Sony is a CE company and this "e-book store requirement" does not fit with the broader corporate strategy as a savvy hardware brand and is the Achilles' heel of its e-reader division. Sooner or later, Sony must exit the e-reader market OR figure out a way to be profitable while handing over the bookstore to someone else.
Ideally: if Barnes & Nobles could manage to figure out how to make a profit, instead of playing the same end-of-the-line corporate game Blockbuster is pursuing, B&N might be a nice fit for the Sony bookstore, with Sony free to develop and manufacture devices that excel with ePub.
However, this is fantasy: Sony will not be a "significant" player in e-books / e-readers in 2011.
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