The ePub standard is beating out the Mobipocket format in O’Reilly Media’s download stats even though nonDRMed Mobi is Kindle-usable. The chart shows “data in terms of relative volume, rather than percentages.”
Why the above trend? One reason could be that ePub is better for displaying technical books, the majority of O’Reilly’s titles. Also, I suspect that O’Reilly customers are hipper than most to the risks of proprietary formats.
The leading format is still PDF, but I suspect that’ll change as more of O’Reilly’s customers accustom themselves to the glories of a reflowable formats like ePub, which is easier to read on small screen portable devices.
Meanwhile congratulations to O’Reilly’s Andrew Savikas on his election to the board of directors of the International Digital Forum, the group behind ePub.
