Tesco recruits Andy McNab's e-book firm Mobcast to help win the Supermarket content war
Hot on the heels of purchasing Blinkbox and Peter Gabriel's WE7, Tesco has purchased Andy McNab's e-book publishers, Mobcast. It seems clear that the British supermarket heavyweight is currently engaged in a phony war with rival Sainsburys, which snapped up Rovi, Global Media Vault and Anobii for its competing online content service. McNab's company is rather small, only offering around 130,000 titles in the UK, but like the earlier purchases, its infrastructure and resources will most likely be cannibalized to boost the company's forthcoming digital platform.
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Tesco acquires eBook platform provider Mobcast
Tesco has acquired Mobcast, the award-winning digital book platform provider, to offer our customers even more choice in how they buy and enjoy books.
The acquisition further strengthens Tesco's digital entertainment offer, following the 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 a catalogue of more than 130,000 of the UK's most popular titles which can be bought and read on smartphones, tablets and e-readers. Mobcast offers a cloud-based service that lets customers build up an eBook library collection without being locked-in to one single device.
Michael Comish, CEO Tesco Digital Entertainment, said: "We want our customers to have the widest choice in 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, said: "Since we launched Mobcast in 2007, we have been passionate about innovation, the digital book market and allowing customers to read across their devices. We are delighted the products that Mobcast has developed will now be used to introduce the joys of eBook reading to more book lovers in the UK."
Andy McNab, bestselling author & co-founder of Mobcast, said: "As an author I always thought the ability to carry your library around and read on all your personal devices would be a huge benefit to all. We have developed a product that makes this possible, and being acquired by Tesco ensures that this original vision will be available to as many people as possible."
