That’s a clever move, but I still think the K4 is the better value. The Kobo Wifi is selling for the same price in the UK as the K4 (£89). It was pulled back in July and never replaced. That is great for WHSmith because their current iOS app doesn’t comply with Apple’s in-app purchase rules. Kobo did this for Borders and they are in the process of releasing apps for their new French partner Fnac, so my guess is that WHSmith’s apps are in the work queue. Kobo also has reading apps for iOS, Android and Blackberry, and they will soon be releasing apps that have been rebranded for WHSmith. It’s also a great move for Kobo, who had been in the UK market for over 18 months now without getting any significant market share (my source indicated that they control under 5% of the UK book market). The new partnership covers the UK as well as Ireland, and it’s a good move for WHSmith.

Retail has been set at £89 for the Kobo Wifi ($142) and £109 for the Kobo Touch ($173). It’s also going to be available in their 750 stores later this week. WHSmith also has the Kobo Wifi and the Kobo Touch in stock on the website. But that’s good for readers, because it means that you can choose from the over 2 million titles that Kobo carries in stock. Their ebookstore is already powered by Kobo even though the press release still isn’t out. WHSmith moved surprisingly fast on this deal. Kobo currently offers more than 2 million titles 1.8 million of which are books in the public domain.WHSmith just announced that they are closing their independent ebookstore in favor of a new partnership with Kobo.

If the text is DRM free, being able to pick up where you left off, on any device you pick up, is a wonderful feature.” An e-reader already divorces the text from its traditional physical home - the book - and syncing between devices takes this even further. “Whispersync is one of the best aspects of the Kindle. And you are back at the page where you were when you left.” “If you switch from an iPhone to a Blackberry, you log back into your Kobo account and all of the books that you read, or have read, or are reading show up there in your reading list and you can dive into the most recent book…. Tamblyn said Kobo’s system of managing readers’ libraries makes switching between devices easy. They might finally realize their mistake when they want to put their Kindle books on another device.” The general public (the market for e-readers) will just go to Amazon because buying is easy, and the catalog is fairly good. “As the iPod/iTunes store proved, people don't care about open formats until its too late. However, Sorrel added, the problem for Kobo is the catalogs of books offered and ease of use. This is why the iPod did so well - it played MP3s from the start.”

Asked if this flexibility would be a competitive advantage, Charlie Sorrel, who writes in ’s Gadget Lab column told PW, “Standards are good for the customer and for the hardware maker. The company supports open standards like ePUB format, which allows readers to read on any device.

The idea that readers should be able to switch between devices with their library following them is “fundamental to how Kobo operates,” Tamblyn said. Anticipating that 2010 will be “the year of the tablet,” Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis said in a release that “we are working with major OEMs to ensure that Kobo apps are made available on those devices.” Michael Tamblyn, executive v-p, content, sales and merchandising of Kobo said, “One of the reasons that we’re so excited about the tablet space in general is because we see that as another class of devices that people are going to have around with them a lot.”

Kobo app for blackberry