The ebook reader market is becoming tumultuous, with Barnes & Noble and AT&T teaming with Plastic Logic to challenge Amazon Kindle, and Sony opening up its own readers and bookstore to industry standards, notably ePub.
Moving away from proprietary reading platforms to open standards could reduce cost and increase interest from content owners and consumers, boosting Sony’s bid to rob Kindle of its top spot (though an embedded 3G connection might be even more important, supporting over-the-air downloads and simplified billing). XML-based ePub is a standard developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum for delivery and viewing of ebooks, and is already supported by a rising number of publishers and reading devices, though not Kindle.
To open up the platform further, Sony is also scrapping its proprietary ebook copy protection and adopting a more widely supported DRM (digital rights management) Adobe Content Server 4 (ePub has no native DRM, but can support third party options like Adobe’s). This means that 17 ereaders from nine vendors now support Content Server, which is emerging as the leading ebook publishing platform after Kindle.
This is important for Adobe as part of a broader strategy to embed its technologies into the whole gamut of application delivery systems, as integration of devices with content and apps becomes a key element of the mobile web. This was pioneered by vendors using proprietary systems, like Apple with iTunes/iPod and Amazon with Kindle, but is increasingly moving to open or de facto standards, while vendors are becoming more flexible on copy protection.
The chipmakers are also fighting for their place on the ebook wave, says research firm iSuppli. Qualcomm’s chips are in the Kindle2, displacing Marvell from the original Kindle, but the latter is bringing out a new ereader chipset. Kindle2 also contains some Freescale silicon, and the former Motorola unit also powers the Sony Digital Book. It is not clear which processor is in the new low cost Sony ereader, Pocket Edition. In-Stat says the market for ereader chips will triple to $279.3 million by 2010, from just $92 million this year, and rise again to $1.11 billion in 2013.