Sony is not a company that is swimming in money these days, as the Japanese company has been going through the numbers and making the necessary adjustments in disposing off some of their assets to survive in the years ahead. Hence, it was not surprising to hear that the cost-cutting measures would also enter the e-reader business territory. According to Sony, they will be closing down their Reader store over in the U.S. and Canada sometime in “late March”, where the entire slew of Reader accounts, library content included, would be migrated over to Kobo’s platform in that period of time. Current users have nothing to lose sleep over though, since Sony touts that the entire migration process will be a painless affair. Those who are affected by this migration process will be on the receiving end of an e-mail walkthrough, while this particular deal would also see the Kobo app arrive pre-loaded on select Xperia devices.
Some might see this move to be a step backwards, but an essential one, although if you were to look at it in a positive manner, at least it helps streamline the process, and if you were to go through the entire migration process without losing any data or notice anything amiss, it should not matter too much to the end user in the long run, right? [Press Release]