Very informative article in CB Online about Kobo. One of Kobo’s major investors is Hong Kong-based Cheung King (Holdings). The owner, Li Ka-Shing is one of the richest men in Asia and his holding include a variety of telecom carriers in Asia, Europe and the UK. He also owns China’s largest publishing group and a stake in Facebook.
The article says that Kobo will be announcing partnerships with telecoms to set up co-branded ebook stores which will be pre-loaded on the carriers phones. Kobo is also working to get onto high end smartphones from RIM, HTC, Dell and HP. Kobo will also be offering an e-ink ereader at a a breakthrough price. Couple this with Kobo’s partners’ reach into the retail markets, especially in Asia, and this could be a major event.
Further, as Mike Shatzkin points out in the article, Kobo has actually beaten Google into the cloud. All a reader’s Kobo books reside on Kobo’s servers and so the reader can sync directly to whatever device she is using at the time.
Much info in the article and a “must read”. As Wattpad has shown, there is a huge market, especially in the third world, for reading on cellphones.
Thanks for the heads-up. That CB Online article was fascinating.
I like Kobo, and have purchased a few books from them…. However, their search function leaves much to be desired. If you are buying a book featured on the front page or just browsing, no problem. If you want to search for a specific book, good luck.