Kobo is Ending Support for Sony Readers

29.01.2019 Nate Hoffelder 3 Comments

Remember back in 2014 when Sony exited the ebook market and handed their customers to Kobo? Me neither, but apparently a number of Kobo customers are about to get a reminder.

Kobo sent out a spate of emails yesterday informing certain Kobo device owners of updates (more on this in another post). According to one Kobo user at Mobileread, Kobo told Sony Reader owners that it would no longer support their five-year-old ereaders.

We have important news for you regarding your Sony Reader.

Part of our commitment to providing the best possible reading experience means keeping up with the latest advances in eReader technology and internet security protocols. With this in mind, we will need to discontinue support for some of our earliest products.

As of February 28, the Sony Reader will no longer be supported by Rakuten Kobo*. This means it will no longer receive software updates, and will not be able to connect to the Kobo eBookstore. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Rest assured that no items in your Kobo library will be affected; you will continue to have access to all reading material you have purchased or downloaded from Rakuten Kobo.

Read with Kobo with the free Kobo App

You can download the free Kobo App available for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, and read with Kobo on a device you already own.

Kobo is a company built by booklovers for booklovers, and we will continue to expand on our reading experience, offering you cutting-edge eReaders, easy-to-use reading apps, and reading recommendations chosen just for you.

After Kobo took over support for the Sony Readers, they released a firmware made the Sony Readers compatible with Kobo’s system (I beleive Kobo also enabled a wireless connection to the Kobo Store, but I can’t find my post and could be wrong).

That compatibility is ending, but it’s not the end of the world. You can still read Kobo ebooks with your Sony Reader if you strip Kobo’s DRM or if you use Adobe Digital Editions to transfer the DRMed ebook to your Sony Reader.

My preference is to remove the DRM, but YMMV.