Tesco and Kobo have come to terms on the Blinkbox Books business unit. Customers will be able to transition all of their past purchases to the Kobo ecosystem and have the option to buy new e-Books from Kobo in the future.
Blinkbox will be emailing their customers in two to three weeks with a unique code and a link to a specially created Kobo registration page – You will need to click the link in that email where you will be able to transfer your blinkbox Books library to Kobo.
The existing Blinkbox Books app will be discontinued within a few months, once the majority of customers have transferred their past purchases to Kobo. In the future, you will need to install the dedicated Kobo app if you want to make new purchases. A firmware update will be sent off to Hudl tablet owners removing the Tesco store and automatically installing the Kobo version.
Kobo has done quite well for themselves over the course of the last few years by taking over the e-book business from companies that went under. Last year Sony closed down their longstanding Reader Store and transferred all past purchases to Kobo. This was a boon to the Canadian based company because it added over 100,000 active customers who started to buy e-books from Kobo, instead of Sony. The same thing is happening now with Tesco and their Blinkbox Books platform.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.