The Kobo eReader is an e-book reader produced by Toronto based company Kobo Inc. The original version was released in July 2010 and was marketed as a minimalist alternative to the more expensive e-book readers available at the time. As of March 2010, fifty eight percent of Kobo Inc. had been owned by Indigo Books & Music; however the Japanese conglomerate Rakuten bought control of Kobo in January 2012. Like most e-book readers, the Kobo uses an electronic ink screen
Kobo Inc., an anagram of 'book', announced its first eReader on 24 March 2010 at the CTIA show. It was officially released on 1 May 2010. It had an expandable memory, holding an additional 4GB via an SD slot and limited wireless connectivity via Bluetooth to select Blackberry wireless devices. It was available in either black or white and came preloaded with 100 public domain books. This eReader was manufactured by Netronix Inc., aTaiwan based company with factories in Taiwan and China.
The pricing strategy of the original Kobo, at USD$149, was to rival the Amazon Kindle, which was USD$110 more expensive. However, in June 2010, just after the Kobo was released, Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle to USD$189. Its pricing strategy in Australia was similarly aggressive where it was available for AUD$199, again AUD$100 less than the Kindle. Borders Australia said that they hoped to sell high volumes of the Kobo to drive up sales at their e-content store.
The original Kobo received a mediocre review from CNET, which said that, while the Kobo was compact, lightweight and affordable, the lack of Wi-Fi or3G made it outdated, especially when there were similarly priced eReaders available with those features.
In December 2010, the original Kobo's feature set was updated with a firmware update to more closely match the Wifi model.
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