Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in part ...

s (PDA) and desktop operating systems. The Mobipocket software package was free and consisted of various publishing and reading tools for PDAs,

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

, mobile phones, the e-readers Kindle and

iLiad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Ody ...

, and applications on devices using Symbian,

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

, Palm OS, Java ME and Psion. Amazon.com bought Mobipocket.com in 2005 and kept it running until October 2016, when it permanently shut down the Mobipocket website and servers.

History

Amazon.com bought Mobipocket.com in 2005. Amazon's acquisition was believed to be a result of Adobe Systems' announcement that it would no longer sell its eBook-packaging and -serving software. An alpha release of the Java-based version of the Mobipocket reader became available for cellphones on June 30, 2008. There is also a reader for desktop computers running

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

, which also works with computers running

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

using

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented grapes. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different ...

. It has been widely reported that since Amazon's acquisition of Mobipocket, software support, user support, and platform growth ended. In December 2011, Amazon reportedly officially notified the book publishers that it was ending support for Mobipocket. The status of Mobipocket

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted work ...

(DRM) content previously purchased by users remains unclear since no other ebook-reader supports its proprietary DRM method. On October 31, 2016,

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

permanently shut down the Mobipocket website and servers.

Design

The software provides: *A personalized press review using the Mobipocket Web Companion, an automated content extraction tool dedicated to press articles. * eBooks, including for each book a biography of the writer. Each downloaded eBook is registered in the My Mobipocket personal virtual library, from which a user has access to any previously downloaded eBook. *A secure reading system, as a result of the encryption of eBooks using DRM and unique signature, a timestamp added to each book at the time of purchase. Depending on the device, different functions are available. Those are usually managing of books and their metadata, assigning books to arbitrary categories, auto-scroll, rotate by 90° or 180°, bookmarks, custom

hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text w ...

s within one or between different documents, highlighting, comments and by sketches. When transferring documents to other device types, functions that are not supported on the device will be ignored, but the information one is reading will not be altered or deleted. Each book has one or two language attribute(s); in the later case it is meant to be a dictionary. As a typical example, reading a book in Fr language, a word may be selected and asked to translate with Fr → En dictionary provided the appropriate dictionary is installed on the reader-device. Dictionaries are always unidirectional so Fr → En dictionary cannot be used in reverse - a separate En → Fr dictionary is needed for that.

Implementations

There is a reader for

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or te ...

s that works with either encrypted or unencrypted Mobipocket books. Unencrypted Mobipocket books can be read on the

Amazon Kindle Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. ...

natively, as well as in Amazon Kindle programs on

, iOS devices, Android devices,

, and

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

devices. By using third-party programs such as

Lexcycle Stanza Lexcycle was a software company that made electronic book reading software. They were responsible for Stanza, which ran on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms. In April 2009, Lexcycle was acquired by Amazon.c ...

, calibre or

Okular Okular is a multiplatform document viewer developed by the KDE community and based on Qt and KDE Frameworks libraries. It is distributed as part of the KDE Applications bundle. Its origins are from KPDF and it replaces KPDF, KGhostView, KFax, ...

, unencrypted Mobipocket books can also be read on Mac OS X, iOS, Android devices and

. Third party tools exist to decrypt encrypted Mobipocket books, allowing them to be read using software that does not support encryption. A user can thus create documents in the Mobipocket format .mobi (which is the same as the Palm OS format .PRC) and use personal comments, bookmarks, and more on all devices supporting those features. Additionally, Amazon offers a free program called KindleGen that can convert or create documents in the Mobipocket format. This program was, however discontinued in the year 2020. An alternative application, called Kindle Previewer, was launched by Amazon shortly after in replacement of KindleGen with all the same features and more. User-added information, such as annotations and bookmarks, are kept in separate ".mbp" files by the official Mobipocket Reader and Kindle applications. In October 2012, Amazon also introduced an encrypted variant of the file (".smbp"), preventing access to the information by third-party applications. Mobipocket has not released a version for Android. Owners of Android devices can download

's Kindle application from the Android App store, which can read .mobi files, though no official Mobipocket reader for the Android platform has been released. Long term plans for the Mobipocket platform are in question in the wake of

's announcement of the Kindle File Format 8, which moves in the direction of HTML5 and CSS3. As one of the most popular e-readers, the Kindle has great sway in the popularity of e-reader formats.

Legacy

The Amazon Kindle's AZW format (a.k.a. Kindle File Format) is basically just the Mobipocket format with a slightly different serial number scheme (it uses an asterisk instead of a dollar sign). In late 2011, the Kindle Fire introduced "Kindle Format 8" (KF8), also known as AZW3 file format that supports a subset of HTML5 and CSS3 features, while acting as a container for a backwards-compatible MOBI content document."Amazon Throws A Minor Curveball With HTML5-Powered Kindle Format 8"
, TechCrunch, October 20, 2011.

References

External links