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Kobo Turns Six Today

4223968149_1d4230cf90_bThere might not be any fireworks, parades, or even a sale to mark the occasion, but 16 December is an important day for Kobo.

Six years ago today the Canadian bookseller Indigo changed the name of its ebook platform, Shortcovers, and launched Kobo on to the international scene. Unlike Barnes & Noble’s Nook, which launched only in the US earlier that year, Kobo’s store had an explicit international focus, with local partners in the US (Borders), Canada (Indigo), New Zealand & Australia (RedGroup Retail), and Hong Kong.

Kobo lacked an ereader (that wouldn’t be announced for a couple months) but it did have apps for Android, iPhone , and a couple phones no one uses anymore (Palm Pre, Blackberry).

And as this piece from Wired shows, Kobo was widely lauded at the time:

Kobo is so far the best and most comprehensive service we have used to buy and read books, especially for non-U.S. residents. It is still flawed, and it is a royal pain that Kindle won’t support EPUB books. But with its platform-agnostic approach, huge catalog and new heavyweight partners, we expect to see Kobo grow fast.

In fact, I’m pretty certain that my next e-book reader will not be a Kindle.

With this broad base of popular support, many expected Kobo to go far, but sadly that didn’t happen. The company’s shoestring budget forced it to rely on local partners for promotion, so when two of those partners (Borders and RedGroup) went bankrupt in 2011, Kobo was left with no major presence in the still-key US market.

Kobo later added other partner retailers, including Family Christian Store and Indiebound in the US, and WHSmith in the UK, but neither the new partners nor the sale to Rakuten in late 2011 were enough to help Kobo achieve a success equal to the early hype.

Nevertheless, Kobo has still managed to become one of the top five global ebookstores. That’s a whole lot more than can be said for many of Kobo’s late competitors, including Sony, txtr, Cool-ER, Blinkbox, and Zola.

Happy Birthday, Kobo!

image by Digital Magic Photography

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Comments


poiboy December 16, 2015 um 7:23 pm

sadly, kobo’s customer service/repair has not left infancy stage. lol

Nate Hoffelder December 16, 2015 um 7:27 pm

Yes, that’s another part that never got over the shoestring origins.


fjtorres December 16, 2015 um 9:03 pm

Kobo’s main problem is that they have very little mindshare outside the hobbyist market. That means they have measurable share in small undeveloped markets but in the more mature markets where mainstream buyers dominate there prominence fades because they lack a platform to bring them to the attention of readers.

It doesn’t help when their own parent company won’t even link them on their ecommerce website.

Indigo chose exactly the right time to flip them.


Mary December 17, 2015 um 8:18 am

Compared to Amazon, Kobo’s customer service is draconian. However, it has improved over what it used to be, and when my Kobo Glo HD froze up on me, Kobo replaced it. So from what I read about how it used to be, things are a little better now.


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