Richard Askenase, in a comment thread over at Teleread:
"I believe that Sony will NOT be a long term player in ebooks. 1) They have been continuallty struggling with matching Amazon prices for the hardware. 2) Their bookstore is totally non-comptetive and won’t be so. 3) No One thinks of them in terms of books. So, I think they’ll be gone by 2012.
"Kobo I don’t see as a long term player in the US market either. 1) Borders may be bye bye (or at least shrinking by 30-50%), thus the major retail outlet for the Kobo will diappear. And, Borders is not much of an ebook store anyway. Kobo does have a good product apparently, though, according to Joanna, it still needs major software upgrades, but I think their future is Canada, Australia, etc, NOT America.
"B & N has done an excellent job fixing the Nook, and now competing on better price and wifi model. Also, I see that the B & N ebook sales may have bettered Amazon in March/April, according to reports. I think that is a big shot across the bow of Amazon, and has startled them MORE than lowering the nook price. So, B & N is in this for the long run (and their in-store marketing is pretty good).
"Apple’s iBook store, in my opinion, will not be a very big player although they will continue to sell many iPads. 1) They are so far behind Amazon and B & N on number of books in the bookstore and the reviews, etc within the store, that they will not catch up. 2) In fact, I do not believe that they will try. Look Amazon has over 615,000 ebooks in the store, and still over 580,000 after deducting the free public domain books. Apple is at about 50,000- not competitive. I think the iBook store will stick with best sellers only and not go for depth of catalogue. 3) I still believe that it has been shown that not much book reading is being done on the iPad. The number of 2.5 books downloaded per ipad is a JOKE, and does NOT make the iPad a serious ebook reader for the serious reader. Newspapers and magazines will be its reading forte (which is fine).
"Finally, I think the big elephant NOT yet in the room is Google. I don’t really understand where Google is going. Will they sell an ebook reader? How will they sell ebooks to other ereaders? We should see their strategy over the next 18 months."