Sony had already given up the reigns for content to Kobo for its US and Canadian customers, but as of June all Sony eReader and Sony Xperia devices with the reader software on will be redirected to the Kobo store.
Access to Kobo’s platform will be enabled on Sony Reader and Xperia devices in UK, Germany, Austria and Australia from June, with a stunted rollout of the changes coming to the the 4 countries, so don’t expect a sudden change on the 16th of June.
With the news of the change, Takahito Aiki, CEO of Kobo said:
“We are delighted to be working with Sony to reach the most passionate Readers in Europe and Australia, by bringing the Kobo world to Reader Store customers – keeping them reading their favourite stories”
With the mega force of Amazon’s Kindle store being the big contender in the e-reader field, many other tech companies have failed in their attempts to keep a virtual reader store going, with google, Apple, Amazon and Kobo some of the few names still supplying large amounts of ebooks digitally.
In the UK, major Book retailer WH Smiths have already assigned all their digital book sales to Kobo showing just how tough the Market is to compete in.
When the changes happen, the Kobo app will be pre-installed on some Xperia tablets and smartphones, and there will be a simple migration progress to access your Sony-purchased content through the Kobo store.
Sony have also confirmed that Instructions on how to migrate your stuff will be sent out via email or you can check out more information in Sony’s FAQ.