The e-book wars are taking another turn, and this time it's Sony, not Amazon or its Kindle, that's leading the charge. Sony on Thursday unveiled plans to convert the entirety of its e-book store to EPUB, the open book publishing standard that almost everyone with skin in the e-book game supports -- except Amazon.
"Our intention is to lead by example," said Steve Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division, in a statement Thursday. "Our Readers have long supported industry-standard formats such as EPUB and PDF. Now, what is quickly becoming the de facto standard for eBooks will be available in our store."
EPUB, which was established in 2007 by the International Digital Publishing Forum, is something that Amazon might be ignoring at its own peril. While Amazon's dedicated Kindles are out front in the rapidly ramping-up battle for e-book and e-reader dominance, Sony essentially calls out Amazon for its hubris as Sony pushes its own proprietary format, BeBB, to the side.
"A world of proprietary formats and DRMs creates silos and limits overall market growth," Haber noted. "Consumers should not have to worry about which device works with which store. With a common format and common content protection solution (DRM), consumers will be able to shop around for the content they want regardless of where they get it or what device they use."
It's wise for Sony, which with its own Reader couldn't capture the type of national excitement Amazon's Kindle has created, to hammer away at these points as much as possible.
As Sony's statement is quick to point out, its Reader was the first dedicated e-reading device to support EPUB, and Sony's recently released Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition support EPUB and PDF. Sony is also adopting Adobe Content Server 4 to copy-protect downloadable e-books.
Maybe Sony's looking to its own history as it suggests Amazon is getting carried away with an all-Kindle and Kindle-only mantra. It was the Sony-developed videotape format Betamax that despite an early boost of popularity in the late '70s quickly bowed to VHS and faded into obscurity. More than a few pundits have made that type of comparison in recent weeks -- and it's not that much of a stretch.
Is there more on the way from Sony? Despite already having unveiled two new Readers this month, Sony's Reader team has another press conference scheduled for Aug. 25. Rumors abound that a third new Reader announcement will come out of it -- and a number of observers have speculated that it'll be a wireless-enabled edition. A lack of wireless 3G connectivity has so far been a hindrance to Sony's Readers, so it would be a logical step.
