Kobo Expects to Invest "Hundreds of Millions" to Open In "A Couple Dozen" Countries

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In interviews following up on Indigo's deal to sell Kobo to Japan's Rakuten, Indigo ceo Heather Reisman made it clear that "over the next year, this business will need in excess of $100 million to take it to where this industry is going, and we just cannot play in that league for that amount of capital."

Kobo ceo Michael Serbinis thinks they will need even more investment than that: "Certainly the capital needs in the next couple of years, without revealing too much about strategy, is in the hundreds of millions. And whether a hundred gets you to 6 months or 12, we'll see--but it's certainly in the hundreds of millions."

Separately, Serbinis tells Digital Book World Kobo expects to expand much faster internationally now: "We expect to be in Japan early into the new year; we expect to be in Brazil next year and this is all possible now. We did a handful of countries this year and we’ll do a couple dozen next year."

In other enews, Publishing Perspectives quotes a report in which Amazon executive Pedro Huerta promises Chileans "that the Kindle will be up and running in Chile, with enhanced content in Spanish, within 18 months."
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