Now keep that in mind as you read this story at The Daily News Online here. Amazon owns Mobipocket. In this story the tech writer fails to mention that Amazon owns Mobipocket, another huge online eBook sales company.
But the reporter asks whether Kindle Reader software for iPhone will be good for Amazon?
Missing from the article is the fact that Mobipocket delayed the release of the Mobipocket Reader for iPhone, just as its parent company Amazon delayed the release of the Kindle Reader for iPhone, in an attempt to manipulate the market and create an open field to deliver their Kindle 2.
That manipulation shut the millions of iPhone readers out of AMAZON and MOBIPOCKET because they could not open DRM-locked files with the APPS they had to develop on their own to turn their iPhones into eBook Readers. They couldn’t open and read the eBooks that AMAZON and MOBIPOCKET had for sale. One of those APPS mentioned in the article, the STANZA Reader is now a competitor in its own right, and is capable of opening practically all eBook formats and is available for Desktop too.
This economic and technical isolation encouraged iPhone eBook fans to look to other sources for reading material, some of which had to be cracked eBooks, unlocked, pirated, re-sold or borrowed out there on the web.
That in turn has begun the same sort of lock-picking and file-sharing that plagues the music and movie industries.
So, to respond to that tech reporter’s suggestion that a Kindle Reader for iPhone could be good for Amazon, I will say, uh obviously, but it could have been much better for everyone if Amazon had not manipulated the marketplace and turned consumers into competitors. Yah?
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[…] move did little to further Amazon’s ambitions, as you can read here. So we have to hope Apple is not just lining up to make the same mistake, […]