Mobipocket

French software company (2000–2016)

Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the mobi e book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems. The Mobipocket software package was free and consisted of various publishing and reading tools for PDAs, smartphones, mobile phones, the e readers Kindle and iLiad, and applications on devices using Symbian, Windows, Palm OS, Java ME and Psion. Amazon. com bought Mobipocket. com in 2005 and kept it running until October 2016, when it permanently shut down the Mobipocket website and servers.

Amazon. com bought Mobipocket. com in 2005. An alpha release of the Java based version of the Mobipocket reader became 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 or Linux using Wine. Since Amazon's acquisition of Mobipocket, software support, user support, and platform growth ended. In December 2011, Amazon reportedly officially notified book publishers that it was ending support for Mobipocket. The status of Mobipocket digital rights management (DRM) content previously purchased by users was unclear since no other eBook reader supported its proprietary DRM method. On October 31, 2016, Amazon permanently shut down the Mobipocket website and servers.

There was a reader for personal computers that worked with either encrypted or unencrypted Mobipocket books. Unencrypted Mobipocket books could be read on the Amazon Kindle natively, as well as in Amazon Kindle programs on Mac OS X, iOS devices, Android devices, Windows, and Windows Phone devices. By using third party programs such as Lexcycle Stanza, calibre or Okular, unencrypted Mobipocket books could also be read on Mac OS X, iOS, Android devices and Linux. Third party tools existed to decrypt encrypted Mobipocket books, allowing them to be read using software that does not support encryption. A user could thus create documents in the Mobipocket format mobi and use personal comments, bookmarks, and more on all devices supporting those features. Additionally, Amazon offered a free program called KindleGen that could convert or create documents in the Mobipocket format. This program was, however discontinued in the year 2020. An alternative application, called Kindle Previewer, was launched by Amazon shortly after in replacement of KindleGen with all the same features, in addition to other new features. User added information, such as annotations and bookmarks, were kept in separate ". mbp" files by the official Mobipocket Reader and Kindle applications. In October 2012, Amazon also introduced an encrypted variant of the file (". smbp"), preventing access to the information by third party applications. Owners of Android devices could download Amazon's Kindle application from the Android App store, which could read mobi files, though no official Mobipocket reader for the Android platform was released.

The Amazon Kindle's AZW format (Kindle File Format) i shares a substantial similarity with the Mobipocket format, distinguished primarily by serial number representation (making use of an asterisk instead of a dollar sign). In late 2011, the Kindle Fire introduced "Kindle Format 8" (KF8), also known as AZW3 file format that supported a subset of HTML5 and CSS3 features, while acting as a container for a backwards compatible MOBI content document.