[ghero]

I think when come down to the format support issue, you would have also to consider the business model of the e reader maker: do they want to make money mainly on the device they are selling you, or mainly on the e books which you will by from them?

I think for kobo, it is quite clear, they use high hardware specification to attract customers, but the end goal of doing this is probaly not to sell it for only 129, but they want the device to lead you to buy their books -- currently mostly (if not only) epub formats. If they were to make glo to adapt better on other formats, they will spend more (on the format adatpation developments) and earn less (since you will be less willingly to buy their books because you will have much broader choice of books to read conviniently from and not to buy from them). So base on this point of view, it is easy to explain why kobo is doing what ever it takes to make glo looks better and ads, but once you have got it, you realize you just don't want to use glo to read formats like pdf, and then you settle down by thinking it is just probaly a epub reader, and start to consider if you should by an epub from kobo store.

In contrast, like sony readers, eventhough sony has its own online book store, but it seems sony focuses more on hardware profits, at least more than kobo does. This could explain why sony makes its reader more pdf format adaptive and a lot features that makes you read conviniently, but at the same time, down grading the hardwares on the recent models, while attempt to rise market price of the product.

So basically in the end, I think for the issue of formats, it is how the companies want to profit will mostly deternmine what kind of reading experiences the customers will eventually get in the end.