The market for e-book readers exploded upon the release of Amazon's Kindle in 2007.
Mobipocket is a French company, formed in 2000 to market its ebook format, which is one of the earliest ebook formats. It is based on Open E-Book, an earlier file type that attempted to create an e-book standard that was largely replaced by ePub -- the current open standard for e-books.
Functionality
The Mobipocket format is based on XHTML and contains some support for Javascript. This means it can support hyperlinks and annotations that reference other texts, like dictionaries and encyclopedia. Contents of Mobipocket books can be "reflowed" to an optimal screen size, also accounting for font, typeface and margin configuration.
Compatible Devices
The functionality of the Mobipocket file format allows for support on various platforms, from traditional desktop and laptop applications, to dedicated e-book readers, to smartphones. This standard was developed before the modern understanding of smartphones and e-book readers, so the systems it supports, like Symbian and Palm OS, are somewhat forgotten.
MOBI
The file format of Mobipocket is called .MOBI, although an alternate file format, called .PRC, is fully compatible. It lives on mostly due to it being officially supported by Amazon's Kindle, which reads it natively as a DRM-free e-book source, like .RTF. Many low cost, lower end, open standard e-book readers also support .MOBI.
AZW
Mobipocket was purchased by Amazon.com in 2005. The result of this arrangement was the development of the Kindle-native AZW file format, which is the exact same file format as MOBI except for the fact that it has a custom digital rights management (DRM) scheme that allows an ebook purchase to be tied to one (or a few) registered devices.
Tags: file format, e-book readers, Amazon Kindle, format which, open standard