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posted by Fnord666 on Friday January 26 2018, @09:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the ebook-market-competition-at-last? dept.

Rakuten (the owner of Kobo) and Walmart have teamed up to take on the Amazon Kindle.

On Thursday Walmart and Rakuten announced a strategic partnership that makes Walmart Kobo's official partner here in the US:

As part of this alliance, Walmart will become Rakuten Kobo's exclusive mass retail partner for the Kobo brand in the U.S., offering Kobo's nearly six million titles from thousands of publishers and hundreds of thousands of authors to Walmart.com customers. Walmart.com will offer eBooks and audiobooks for sale later this year. Walmart will also sell digital book cards in stores, enabling more than 4,000 stores to carry a broader selection of books for customers.

All eBook content will be accessible through a Walmart/Kobo co-branded app available on all iOS and Android devices, a desktop app and Kobo e-Readers, which will also be sold at Walmart later this year.

Walmart is stepping into a role empty since Border went bankrupt in 2011. While Kobo has previously had US retail partners, including Indiebound and Family Christian Stores, they did not get the privilege of co-branded Kobo apps (just the financial benefit of a cut of ebook sales in exchange for selling Kobo hardware).

For what it is worth, Walmart gets the ebook app under its own brand. Given Kobo's negligible share of the US market, that won't be worth a lot of money, but it is at least an egoboost.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Saturday January 27 2018, @12:27AM (1 child)

    by bob_super (1357) on Saturday January 27 2018, @12:27AM (#628651)

    I read hundreds of pages of docs and articles every month. Tech stuff, no animations nor colors required (okay, occasionally colors do help)
    My eyes would really love a paper-like 20+ inch display (dual-page view really helps). My wallet doesn't agree with the 900 bucks per 13 inches.

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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 27 2018, @01:31AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday January 27 2018, @01:31AM (#628670) Homepage

    Your wallet doesn't mean shit if it's you who aren't paying for the R&D.