Kobo is backed by Indigo Books & Music, Borders, REDgroup Retail, Cheung Kong Holdings, and others. In July, Borders launched its own branded eBook store powered by Kobo. At that time, Border CEO Mike Edwards said, "The race to emerge as a retail leader within the digital category is just starting." 

Since then, Samsung has unveiled its Android-powered Galaxy Tab, and Kobo announced that it would be supplying the e-reader technology for it. Kobo has apps for the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, and Palm Pre. 

Today’s announcement, however, only applies to the reader, the iPhone and iPad apps at this point. Publications include: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Scientist, The Seattle Times, Wilson Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, American Scholar, China International Business, Columbus Dispatch , Guideposts, Harvard Business Review, National Review, New York Observer, PC Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Reason, The Christian Science Monitor Daily Briefing, The Nation, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, Regina Leader-Post, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Vancouver Province, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist, and The Globe & Mail.   

The company says it will continue to expand its offerings in this area. The newspapers’ and magazines’ formats are emulated on Kobo’s offerings. Still, readers can customize text sizes.

"Kobo continues to build on our commitment of making sure that consumers have the best reading experience on any device with the largest selection of content worldwide," said Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis. "We’ve had tremendous success with eBooks and we’re very excited to expand the Kobo offering to include newspapers and magazines with a two-week free trial, allowing consumers to try first without any obligation. We continue to bring on top publishers to ensure that Kobo’s newspaper and magazine offering meets our customers’ highest expectations."

After the two-week trial, monthly subscription prices start at $13.99 for newspapers and $2.99 for magazines. Kobo also claims to have over 2.2 million eBooks available.

Additionally, in those four weeks, customers ordered more Kindles on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined than any other product. That makes Kindle the bestselling product across all products on Amazon for two straight years.

"Kindle is the best-selling product on Amazon.com for two years running and our new generation Kindles are continuing that momentum," said Steven Kessel, senior vice president, Amazon Kindle. "Readers are excited about all that the new Kindle has to offer—50 percent better contrast, 20 percent faster page turns, 15 percent lighter, up to one month of battery life—and a new price of only $139."

The new Kindle has a new electronic-ink screen and a new design with a 21% smaller body, while keeping the 6 inch screen of the old Kindle. It has built-in Wi-Fi, a graphite color option, and double the storage, holding 3,500 books.

As an added bonus for all of those people that ordered the new Kindles, Amazon also announced that they began shipping today, 2 days earlier than previously announced.

"In the first connectivity wave, the bulk of devices connected to the Internet were PCs and laptops plus their associated modem and networking equipment," says IMS Research President Ian Weightman. "Today, over 1 billion computers worldwide are regularly connected to the Internet, and this number is growing steadily."

The second wave, as IMS refers to, would be the cellular industry, combined with other emerging sectors like tablets, netbooks, eBook readers, TVs, digital picture frames, cameras, etc. These combine with the first wave to get that 5 billion estimation.

"There will be a number of drivers behind this amazing growth," Weightman says with regards to the 2020 prediction. "Firstly, by 2020 we are forecasting that there will be over 6 billion cell phones in use around the world, the great majority of which will be Internet connected. Then consider that there are around 2.5 billion TVs in use today, and that many of these will be replaced with Internet connected sets, you have another tremendous growth area. In addition, an increasing proportion of the world’s 1.1 billion cars will be replaced by models that have Internet connectivity."

"The potential for greatest growth comes from the third wave which will include machine-to-machine (M2M) deployments. This has the potential to go way beyond industrial applications to encompass increasingly sophisticated smart grids, networked security cameras and sensors, connected home appliances and HVAC equipment, ITS infrastructure, etc."

IMS is a firm that tracks installations of Internet-capable equipment. It supplies market research for the global electronics industry.

Google appears to have somewhat given up on Wave, at least as a standalone product. The company posts to the Official Google Blog:

We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Nielsen reports that the mobile Internet is more popular in China that it is in the U.S. "Widespread ownership of mobiles is only a fairly recent development in China, but consumers there have fully embraced the technology and in some ways are using it more robustly than their American and European counterparts," says Shan Phillips, Vice President, Greater China, Telecom Practice, The Nielsen Company.

Nielsen also has another interesting report looking at who is buying the iPad, and asking if they will also buy an iPhone.

WordPress has introduced its own "like" buttons. Now readers can "like" posts, although I’d say for publishers, the Facebook "like" buttons will be a lot more effective for driving traffic. Still, it’s nice to provide as many gateways for engagement as possible (without getting too cluttered, anyway).

According to the Financial Times, Motorola and Verizon have teamed up on a "TV Tablet." This is a device with a 10-inch screen that users will be able to watch television on.

Reuters reports that Sharp intends to launch a 3D smartphone this year. This would feature a 3D panel that can be viewed without special glasses and would have a 3D capable camera.

According to Unwired Review, Samsung is considering puting touchscreen functionality on the back of a tablet. This is based on a patent application for a "mobile terminal having dual touch screen and method of controlling content therein".

Meanwhile, as Engadget writes, Microsoft has been teasing an as-of-yet unannounced product via Twitter, saying, ""Don’t be so touchy…flat is where it’s at," and offering a small partial image of some object. This may or may not be a trackpad.

Meanwhile, for the first time since 2007, RIM has slid to the number 2 position, as Android took the lead.

While Android accounted for 33% of all smartphones purchased in Q2, RIM accounted for 28%. Apple came in third at 22% with the launch of the iPhone 4.

"For  the second consecutive quarter, Android handsets have shown strong but slowing sell-through market share gains among U.S. consumers," said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD. "While the Google-developed OS took market share from RIM, Apple’s iOS saw a small gain this quarter on the strength of the iPhone 4 launch."

This week, BlackBerry unleashed its new BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry 6. It remains to be seen what kind of an impact this will have on the market.

"Blackberry 6 will soon offer features that have been popular in recently launched Android handsets, such as support for capacitive touchscreens and a WebKit-based browser. However, the Blackberry Torch lacks the large screen allure that has characterized the best selling Android devices at its price point, including the Droid Incredible and EVO 4G," Rubin said.

The top 5 Android smartphones sold were:

1. Motorola Droid
2. HTC Droid Incredible
3. HTC EVO 4G
4. HTC Hero
5. HTC Droid Eris

Android still has tablets and Google TV to look forward to as far as attracting more users.

"This is one of the most significant launches in RIM’s history and we are proud to introduce the new BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry 6 together with AT&T," said RIM President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. "With a new user interface, new browser and new handset design, the highly anticipated BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry 6 deliver integrated and uncompromising capabilities for consumers and business professionals that preserve the industry-leading strengths of the BlackBerry platform while adding exciting new dimensions."

Here’s the full feature list from the release:

• Elegant styling, measuring approx. 4.4" (5.8" open) x 2.4" x .57" and weighing 5.68 ounces
• 3.2" 360×480 capacitive touch screen display
• 35 key full QWERTY backlit slide-out keyboard, designed to feel optimally balanced when opened for typing
• Optical trackpad that makes navigation fast and smooth
• Powerful 624 Mhz processor with 512 MB Flash memory
• 4 GB built-in memory storage plus a microSD/SDHD memory card slot that supports up to 32 GB cards; a 4 GB card is included giving users 8 GB of storage out-of-the-box
• 5 MP camera with flash, continuous auto focus, image stabilization, scene modes, geo-tagging and zoom, as well as video recording at up to 640×480 resolution
• Built-in GPS for location-based applications and geo-tagging
• Wi-Fi® (802.11 b/g/n); qualifying smartphone customers can enjoy seamless connectivity to over 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots at no additional cost
• 3.5mm stereo headset jack
• Premium phone features, including voice activated dialing, speakerphone and Bluetooth® (2.1) with support for hands-free headsets, stereo headsets, car kits (including systems that support the Bluetooth Message Access Profile standard) and other Bluetooth accessories
• New BlackBerry® Desktop Software 6 with integrated media sync for easily syncing music, photos and videos^**. It also includes Wi-Fi Music Sync, a unique feature that allows users to view their entire iTunes® or Windows Media® Player music libraries from their BlackBerry smartphone, create and edit playlists as well as select music for download. When in range of their home Wi-Fi network (or via USB), the changes are synced with iTunes or Windows Media Player and the songs are automatically downloaded to the smartphone
• Tri-band HSDPA (3G) and quad-band EDGE support for the option of voice service in more than 220 countries, data service in more than 195 countries and 3G connectivity in more than 125 countries, including Japan and South Korea
• Removable, rechargeable 1300 mAhr battery that provides approximately 5.8 hours of talk time on 3G networks or 30 hours of audio playback or 6 hours of video playback

"BlackBerry 6 is the outcome of RIM’s ongoing passion to deliver a powerful, simplified and optimized user experience for both touch screen and keyboard fans," said Lazaridis. "Following extensive research and development to address consumer needs and wants, we are delivering a communications, browsing and multimedia experience that we think users will love, and we are thrilled to debut BlackBerry 6 on the amazing new BlackBerry Torch smartphone."

A Nielen report released this week indicates that loyalty is lacking among BlackBerry users, saying that half of BlackBerry users could potentially choose an iPhone or an Android phone for their next device. These things should be taken with a grain of salt, and that was before today’s announcements, but it still has to be a little worrisome for RIM.

Original Article: Amazon’s Kindle has been making a lot of headlines lately, and now the company has introduced a new generation of Kindle devices. The new Kindle is smaller, lighter, faster, and has 50% better contrast than any other e-reader on the market, according to Amazon.

It has a new electronic-ink screen and a new design with a 21% smaller body, while keeping the 6 inch screen of the old Kindle. It’s 15% lighter at 8.7 ounces. Amazon claims it has 20% faster page turns, up to a month of battery life, built-in Wi-Fi, a graphite color option, and double the storage, holding 3,500 books. The price is $189, and still comes with free 3G wireless.

Amazon has also introduced the Kindle Wi-Fi, which doesn’t come with 3G, but is only $139.

"Kindle is the best-selling product on Amazon for two years running. We lowered the price to $189 and sales growth tripled," says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Readers are going to do a double take when they see Kindle’s bright new screen and feel how remarkably light the smaller 8.7 ounce design feels in one hand."

The new devices will ship in 140 countries and 30 territories on beginning August 27.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports the BlackBerry maker intends to have one out in November. Hugo Miller writes:

The device will have roughly the same dimensions as the iPad, which has a 9.7-inch diagonal screen, said the two people who wouldn’t be identified because the plans haven’t been made public. The device will include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technology that will allow people to connect to the Internet through their BlackBerry smartphones, the two people said.

Will it be called the BlackPad? As Mobile Crunch pointed out this week, RIM has purchased the BlackPad.com domain.

iPad sales have been impressive, to say the least. However, it has yet to really be faced with competition, and that will soon change. The iPad-like tablet market is going to get flooded with new products and choices for consumers, and there is no doubt that some of them will be much more competitive with pricing. This is one thing that has helped Android grow (which is powering its own iPad competitors).

As the holiday season arrives, it looks like the iPad isn’t going to be the only one getting looked at by consumers.

On top of that, contract market sales grew by less than 1%, while sales of Android phones increased by 350%, the firm says.

"The figures suggest an increasing number of consumers are now asking for Android handsets by name," says GfK analyst Megan Baldock. "Operating Systems are no longer simply a by-product but a key selling point in their own right."

Smartphones, or phones with "advanced operating systems" as GfK puts it, grew to 66.7% of contracts compared to 55% in the first quarter. "Growth has been continuous since 2010 began and is expected to rise consistently throughout the rest of the year; GfK’s latest monthly data shows that in June, phones with advanced OS represented 73.5% of the contract market," the firm adds.

The whole iPhone antenna debacle can’t be too bad for Android. Samsung has even been giving away free Android phones to disgruntled iPhone users (in the UK, as a matter of fact). Watch for tablets, Google TV and Google’s App Inventor to add to Android’s momentum as well.

The device will be available through Apple’s retail and online stores and through authorized resellers. It’s currently available in France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US.

Meanwhile, there might be a hiccup in the international expansion of Apple’s other big product launch of the year – the iPad.

Reuters quotes Kwon Young-soo, CEO of LG Display, a display supplier for the iPad (via Mashable):

"Demand (from Apple) keeps growing and we can’t meet it all. Apple may have to delay launches of the iPad for some countries due to tight component supplies and strong demand.

"We are considering increasing production lines for iPad products but overall supply is likely to remain tight until early next year."

On Friday, Apple announced a delay in the white version of the iPhone 4, while also launching its Case Program in which iPhone 4 owners can get free cases or bumpers.

Last week, the company also announced that it had sold 8.4 million iPhones and 3.27 million iPads in its third quarter.