Kobo Acquires Aquafadas; Plans Expansion Into Magazines, Academic, Comics & Kids Books
TORONTO, October 9, 2012 -- Kobo, Inc., a global powerhouse in eReading with over 10 million users in 190 countries, and Aquafadas a leading digital publishing technology company, today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Kobo intends to acquire Aquafadas. The global eReading market is exploding and with the acquisition of the Aquafadas Digital Publishing System, Kobo will be able to bring a selection of rich media – magazines, academic, comics, kid’s books and more to Kobo customers everywhere. Kobo and Aquafadas share a common vision of delivering rich content to consumers around the world and providing tools that enable publishers to easily produce this content.
“This is a very exciting day for both Kobo and Aquafadas,” commented Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis. “Digital Reading is rapidly evolving now to new rich media categories. This transaction will strengthen both Kobo’s and Aquafadas position in our current markets and allow us to accelerate the growth of rich media with the Aquafadas Digital Publishing system.”
Aquafadas is the industry leader in rich media and offers the most advanced Digital Publishing System that covers all aspects of digital publishing from content design to cross-platforms distribution and analytics. It combines the most advanced content design tools with a versatile library of ready-to-use apps, ePub3 export, and a Web reader. Aquafadas enables publishers across industries to create richly designed books, children’s books, graphic novels, magazines, newspapers, marketing communications, and corporate publishing, all without writing a single line of code. Aquafadas will add a new distribution channel to its universal solution: publishers will have access to massive distribution through the Kobo platform.
“Kobo’s arrival is amazing news,” add Aquafadas CEO Claudia Zimmer. “Thanks to this acquisition, publishers who use Aquafadas Publishing System will benefit from an easy, scalable, solution that will provide access to a new distribution channel in addition to other channels: Kobo’s platform and its 10 million registered users. We will benefit significantly from this partnership and amp up development to deliver more innovative tools. By working together to further enhance the Kobo product line-up the creation of rich-media content, Kobo and Aquafadas will take digital reading to a new level.”
