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In a move that took most industry pundits by surprise, Sony today announced that it will adopt the open ePub standard as the default format for books in its eBook store by the end of the year. EPub is an XML-based standard for publishing eBooks that has been adopted by a wide variety of hardware manufacturers, publishers, and retailers - with the notable exception of Amazon and it's Kindle store and eBook reader. Thanks to this, even owners of non-Sony eReaders will soon be able to read books they have bought in Sony's store. It is important to note, however, that adopting this open format doesn't mean that all the books in Sony's store will now be DRM-free.

By the end of this year, Apple's App Store will carry more than 100,000 apps. According to Flurry, which specializes in providing real-time analytics to mobile app developers on the iPhone, Android, JavaME, and Blackberry, new project starts among iPhone developers show no sign of slowing down. Flurry, however, also noticed that a growing number of developers have started to work on Android applications - maybe in reaction to Apple's erratic App Store approval process. Over the past six months, the number of new Android apps that have integrated Flurry's analytics doubled and the pipeline for new Android apps is also filling up quickly.

Sony just dropped the price of all new releases and New York Times bestseller titles in its eBook store to $9.99. In addition, the company also announced two new hardware eReaders: the Sony Reader Pocket Edition with a five-inch screen for $199 and the Reader Touch Edition ($299) with a touch screen and Memory Stick and SD card expansion slots. The new devices will be available by the end of August.

While Sony has always offered very attractive eReaders, the prices in Sony's eBook store were a deal-breaker for many who had been considering buying a Sony eBook reader. Amazon generally charges $9.99 for an eBook, but until today, Sony often asked for $11.99 or more.

According to a new report by Forrester Research's Sarah Rotman Epps, eBooks and eReaders are slowly but surely becoming mainstream. However, while Amazon is the current market leader among early adopters of this technology, Rotman Epps predicts that later adopters will not feel the same loyalty towards Amazon. This, according to the report, will open up a lot of opportunities for other players in the market, including Sony and large mass-market retailers like Walmart.

Google's vision for Google Books obviously goes far beyond the controversial Google Book Search settlement with the Authors Guild and the AAP. The Google Books settlement mostly dealt with the past and out-of-print books. In a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View last night, however, Google Books' engineering director Dan Clancy laid out a clearer vision of the company's plans for Google Books for the first time. Among other things, the company hopes to create its own electronic bookstore for in-print books. In Google's vision, publishers would partner with the company and offer all of their books through Google and through traditional retailers.

Sony just announced that owners of the Sony Reader can now access over 1 million free, out of copyright and public domain eBooks from the Google Books library. Sony first announced this deal with Google earlier this year, but at that time, it only offered about 500,000 free books. Barnes & Noble, which announced its eBook store and forthcoming hardware eReader last week currently features about 500,000 free books from Google, while Amazon's Kindle can read free books from Project Gutenberg, but doesn't offer compatibility with the ePub format that Google prefers. Amazon currently offers about 300,000 books.

Barnes & Noble, the beleaguered online bookstore, opened its eBook store yesterday. That, by itself would be a major news story, but B&N also announced that it has partnered with Plastic Logic, which is expected to release a highly anticipated Kindle competitor soon. For now, eBooks bought through B&N can be read on PCs and Macs, as well as on iPhones and Blackberries. While iPhone and Blackberry apps are nice, though, no eBook vendor can really compete with Amazon without a good hardware eReader that is integrated closely with an eBook store. Given that B&N seems to have all of the necessary pieces in place, however, we think that the the company can indeed challenge Amazon, especially given that it offers a larger selection of books and plans to offer a device that is more open than Amazon's Kindle.

When it comes to eReaders, Amazon's Kindle is obviously the largest player in the U.S., with Sony's eReader being a distant second. A few days ago, though, we got a chance to talk to Hans Brons, the CEO of iRex. IRex is a company worth watching closely, as it is a spin-off from the e-ink research group at Philips that developed the screen technology that is being used by most current generation eBook readers. Philips decided that it didn't want to pursue this line of research in 2005 and decided to license the technology to other vendors.

According to a new report from Cambridge University (PDF), students aren't interested in being able to read eBooks and eJournals on their mobile phones. Instead, users are far more interested in opening hours, location maps, contact info, and access to the library catalog. Most respondents were also far more interested in getting alerts by text message than being able to use library resources over the mobile web.

Social publisher Scribd and CBS-owned megapublisher of "real" books Simon & Schuster have just announced an agreement to sell Simon & Schuster eBooks in the Scribd Store.

The Scirbd store itself just launched last month. About 5,000 Simon & Schuster titles will be available through the Scribd store. Those titles will then be readable on Scribd.com, computer desktops, and various mobile devices. Simon & Schuster will also make thousands of printed titles available for preview with links to purchase from other outlets.