Tesco customers should soon have more choice in how they buy and enjoy e-books, thanks to the retail giant’s acquisition of digital bookseller Mobcast for US$7.2m.
The acquisition strengthens Tesco’s digital entertainment offerings, coming on the heels of its purchase of movie and TV streaming service blinkbox in 2011 and personalised internet radio service WE7 in June 2012.
Mobcast provides a digital book retail platform with more than 130,000 books, which can be bought and read on smartphones, tablets and e-readers.
Mobcast also offers a cloud-based service that lets customers build an e-book library without being locked into one single device.
“We want our customers to have the widest choice in digital entertainment,” said Michael Comish, CEO Tesco Digital Entertainment.
“We are already one of the UK’s largest booksellers and Mobcast will help us offer even more choice for the large and growing number of customers who want to buy and enjoy books on their digital devices whenever and wherever they want.”
Tony Lynch, CEO of Mobcast, added they are delighted the products Mobcast has developed will now be used to “introduce the joys of e-book reading to more book lovers in the UK”.
E-book reader image via Shutterstock
