There are a lot of really interesting things Kobo is doing in the area of local partnerships that I think is unusual and unique in the ebook business right now---remember, there are an awful lot of non-Americans out there for whom Amazon and Sony are less viable choices
For example, I remember when the Giller prize shortlist was announced---this is a big Canadian literary award---and they approached the publishers of all the nominated books and said if you don't have an ebook version yet, we will work with you to create one. And they had the whole short list for sale pretty quickly. The winning book turned out to be from a very small press who hand-bound each paper copy, so when the book won and every bricks and mortar bookstore was out of stock of this hot title, there was Kobo crowing about how you could buy it off their website on the spot. And they had even sent out an email once the winner was announced letting people know who won and providing a link to the book. Very smart!
And it turned out that Canadians wanted to read these Canadian books, because the Mann Booker winner was announced during this whole time period, and the post-Giller Kobo announcement mentioned that all the Kobo shortlist books (by Canadian authors) were out-selling the non-Canadian Booker winner...
I think that i Kobo continues to emphasize local partnerships like this one, they could corner a very nice niche market for themselves.