Kobo Insiders website cover
Although the ebook is the flagship digital product, lately the audiobook is gaining more fame and being the center of many companies. Now it looks like the audiobook is in Kobo Rakuten's point of view.
Apparently, in recent days the company has been asking its users about podcasts, audiobooks , and everything related to this new digital product.
Kobo's intention seems to be to offer an audiobook section or an audiobook streaming service, as its main competitor Amazon is currently doing with Audible.
Many are already talking about a service similar to Audible of audiobooks within Kobo
Last year, the audiobook market generated over $3 million in the United States alone , with even higher figures in other countries. It's a market too large and popular to ignore. This is why Kobo might try to enter the audiobook market, or at least explore ways to gain a foothold. However, Kobo's interest seems to lie in utilizing or improving Overdrive , the library lending service it recently acquired that supports this digital format.
While the latter is the most plausible scenario, it's also true that Rakuten will eventually merge Kobo and Overdrive under a single service or department , so they may already be working on improving the audiobook experience for the not-too-distant future. In any case, it's important to remember that all of this stems from questions raised in the Insider program, a program that doesn't announce imminent developments but rather reveals Kobo's future direction—directions that could be useful for some users who want or use audiobooks in addition to ebooks.