Mobipocket offers eBook packaging software, including proprietary DRM, that works with a wide variety of handheld devices, such as PDAs and smartphones.  The company found its initial niche in the technical and reference publishing market, then expanded to fiction and other trade books.  It also offers eBooks in portable device formats on www.mobipocket.com. It seems likely that Amazon will shut down the Mobipocket.com site and absorb Mobipocket's offerings into its gargantuan catalog. 

Amazon's leadership of the eBook industry is a natural evolution, given that it does everything else in the book business electronically.  It also dovetails nicely with Amazon's more recent acquisition of BookSurge.com, a provider of print-on-demand (POD) services that will enable Amazon to offer less popular books without having to depend on publishers for inventory. 

Both Adobe and Microsoft entered and then effectively abandoned the eBook market, mainly because publishers have been slow to adopt eBooks and to use them for anything beyond "shovelware" derived from printed books.  Makers of special-purpose eBook reader devices such as Gemstar and Franklin have also fared poorly; Gemstar has abandoned the market, while Franklin became a part owner of Mobipocket in order to diversify itself away from its own eBookMan device.

Apart from Mobipocket, the only eBook technology vendor remaining with any significant market share is eReader, which also offers eBooks in formats for a wide variety of portable devices as well as PCs.  The Mobipocket transaction will surely deal a serious blow to the company.  We expect Amazon's ownership of Mobipocket to eventually make it the only significant player in the desultory eBook market.  

Get DRM Watch Newsletter

Click here to subscribe to DRM Watch