Consumers usually are the losers when there is no competition in a market.  Technologically speaking, Amazon is the only power player in electronic book market. That will soon change, maybe? Wall Street Journal reports that Barnes & Noble is going to enter the e-book market by rolling out their own e-book device to compete against Amazon’s Kindle. Barnes & Noble will probably use Google’s Android operating system to power its e-book device. If this is true, then the e-books that you will buy from Barnes & Noble will be able to play on a whole lot of e-book readers as Google’s Android is supporting the ePub standard.

Another cool thing is that Barnes & Noble will be offering 6% commission to its affiliates for the sell of its e-books, but Amazon is not offering any commission for its Kindle’s e-books. This is definitely going to heat up the e-books market, and as the competition gets better, the consumers will see better e-book prices and have more ways to purchase and absorb their purchased e-books. Let hope Amazon will ditch its closed e-book selling model to become a faithful supporter of ePub standard. Source.