Mobipocket SA is a French company incorporated in March 2000 which produces
Mobipocket Reader software, an E-Book reader for some PDAs, phones and desktop operating systems. The Mobipocket software package is free and consists of various publishing and reading tools for PDA, Smartphones, cellular phones and e-book devices (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, webOS, Java ME, BlackBerry, Psion, Kindle and iLiad). An alpha release of the java-based version of the mobipocket reader was made available for cellphones on June 30, 2008. There is also a reader for desktop computers running Microsoft Windows, which also works with computers running Mac OS X and Linux using WINE.
Mobipocket was bought by Amazon in 2005. Amazon's acquisition was believed to be a result of Adobe Systems's announcement that it would no longer sell its eBook packaging and serving software.
The Mobipocket 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°/180°, bookmarks, custom hyperlinks 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.
There is also a reader for personal computers that works with either encrypted or unencrypted Mobipocket books.
Unencrypted Mobipocket books can be read on the Amazon Kindle reading device natively. By using
third-party programs such as Calibre, Lexcycle Stanza, or Okular,
unencrypted Mobipocket books can also be read on Mac OS X, the iPhone, Android devices and Linux.
You can also
remove DRM protection from Mobipocket ebooks and then convert them to any other format, so you can read them on any device you have (
eBook Reader, computer, cell phone,...)
A user can create documents in the Mobipocket-format (.PRC) and use personal comments, bookmarks and so on on all devices supporting those features.