Rakuten Kobo is enjoying a resurgence. The Canadian company, owned by the Japanese giant Rakuten, has successfully repositioned itself in the US market thanks to an agreement with the electronics chain Best Buy, which has been selling its e-readers and accessories in physical stores since this month. This move marks Kobo's return to retail distribution in the US, after its previous partnership with Walmart dissolved in 2024 without achieving the expected results. Since then, the devices could only be purchased through the Kobo website or third-party retailers, a situation that has now completely changed.
The return to physical retail is no coincidence. According to Michael Tamblyn, the company's CEO, Kobo's sales in the United States have doubled in both 2025 and 2026, growth he attributes to a combination of factors: the arrival of the first e-readers with color screens, the increased visibility of e-readers on social media, and a shift in consumer mindset, with people increasingly inclined to support companies outside of major tech ecosystems. The executive also noted that the rising price of printed books and the popularity of devices among young people on TikTok and Instagram are contributing to the resurgence of interest in digital reading.
An international strategy by territories
Kobo has moved beyond relying solely on its domestic market and has developed a different strategy for each region. In Europe, the company works with established retail partners such as FNAC in France and Spain, Mondadori and Feltrinelli in Italy, and Leya in Portugal. In Germany, where it collaborates with Tolino, Kobo controls approximately 40% of the e-book market, compared to Amazon's 45%, a figure that demonstrates that the American giant's dominance is not as absolute as one might think outside its borders. In fact, Tamblyn has been emphatic in stating that Amazon is only dominant in two markets: the United States and the United Kingdom; in the rest of the world, the competition is much fiercer.
In Asia, Kobo's main market is Japan, where it operates through its parent company Rakuten and where reading is clearly geared towards manga on mobile devices. It is also the leading e-book retailer in Taiwan and has been gradually expanding into Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. In the Americas, the company took a significant step in 2026 with its arrival in Argentina, becoming the first company to offer e-readers in that country, and subsequently launched in Chile. In Mexico, its presence is channeled through the Gandhi and Porrúa bookstores. In the Middle East, the partnership with the Turkish chain D&R continues, and the company is developing an Arabic catalog, which, according to Tamblyn, has required years of work to achieve true commercial viability. In India, where Kobo arrived a few years ago, the catalog remains only in English.
Innovation as a hook: color, notes and accessories
The company pioneered the sale of e-readers with color screens in 2024, a move that allowed it to beat Amazon to the punch and, according to its CEO, "generated a lot of interest" from consumers. But the innovation doesn't stop there. Kobo has also listened to its social media community and developed its own page-turning remote after noticing that many TikTok users were modifying game controllers for that very purpose. These kinds of details, along with the integration of the Libby library lending platform directly into its devices, are helping the company build loyalty among a user base that seeks a cleaner and more privacy-conscious alternative.
Kobo has also focused on nonfiction readers. After conducting research with readers of this genre, Kobo discovered that many of them needed to take notes and highlight while reading, something they couldn't find on traditional e-readers. This was the seed of their commitment to styluses and annotation on devices, including a patent that allows freehand writing on the entire page—a capability that, according to Tamblyn, no competitor offers. The data supports this decision: users who employ a stylus read roughly 50% fiction and 50% nonfiction, while among those who don't, the ratio is 80% fiction to 20% nonfiction.
Comparison with the competition and reading habits
Regarding reading habits, Tamblyn has been very clear in pointing out that the decline in reading in the United States is concentrated among occasional readers, not regular ones. "We're losing the person who reads one book a year," he says, referring to those who used to buy a novel for vacation because there was nothing else to do on the plane. Now that airplanes have Wi-Fi and beaches do too, that person prefers scrolling on their phone to reading. According to his calculations, this phenomenon accounts for approximately five percentage points of the annual decline in the number of Americans who finish a book each year. However, the cohort of regular readers—those who read twelve or more books a year—remains stable.
Demographically, the company has acknowledged that its North American customer base is approximately 70% female and 30% male, a ratio that balances out when it comes to non-fiction and stylus-enabled devices. The distribution varies considerably by market: in Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore, the proportion is nearly equal, while in Brazil, male users predominate. This level of transparency is unusual in the industry, where most companies avoid publishing such data.
In closing, the combination of a well-defined international strategy, a commitment to innovation in color and accessories, and integration with public libraries is allowing Kobo to carve out a niche in a market dominated by Amazon. The company has demonstrated that there is a place for those seeking a more open alternative, with EPUB support and less intrusive data and advertising. With its return to physical stores in the US, the doubling of its sales in that country, and a growing presence in Europe and Latin America, Kobo is positioning itself as a serious competitor, although still far from Kindle's global reach. Its sustained growth and the loyalty of a user base increasingly aware of privacy and technological independence suggest that this battle is far from over.
