Early this morning Deutsche Telecom and Kobo confirmed my scoop from last night: Kobo is taking over for DT as the technology partner for the Tolino ebook platform – but there is still more to the story.

The contracts have been signed, the handover is expected to happen by the end of this month, and they are promising that nothing will change as far as customers are concerned.

The Tolino brand will be staying around, and:

For both tolino and Kobo customers, the change of partner does not alter anything. They will still be customers of their tolino bookstore and be able to use the same services as before. The established tolino brand remains one of the leading eReading brands for the German-speaking region. And the customers will benefit from the usual free access to the hotspots, the tolino app and tolino cloud. It is business-as-usual for retail booksellers of both the tolino and Rakuten Kobo ecosystems.

While that answers our questions about what is going to happen now, it doesn’t exactly say what will happen next. What about the next Tolino ereader – will it be replaced by Kobo hardware? Or what about the next versions of the Tolino apps?

We’re already seeing some Kobo-OverDrive integration following Rakuten buying OverDrive in 2015, so it’s reasonable to wonder whether Kobo and Tolino might also integrate, or possibly merge.

I followed up with Kobo, and here’s what they told me.

O O O

What exactly does this mean for the future of Tolino?

For customers of both Kobo and Tolino, this transition will be seamless. Tolino is a well-known and loved brand name that booklovers trust and will remain in place. Rakuten Kobo has acquired the back-end assets that power the whitelabel service.

Will the next Tolino ereader be a Kobo device?

Tolino devices will continue to be sold by alliance retailers under the Tolino brand. We will work together to ensure the very best reading experience for booklovers.

Will the Tolino apps be replaced with Kobo apps?

The Tolino app will remain.

Are the Tolino and Kobo platforms going to be integrated, or run independently?

Tolino is a major player in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, and will be the exclusive eBook brand for our partnership in these territories. Kobo will continue to maintain its platform and devices for legacy customers.

O O O

Aside from the fact that Kobo is effectively deprecating its own platform in central Europe in favor of Tolino, there isn’t much here which wasn’t announced in the press release.

It’s the same disappointing news that Kobo won’t be reducing costs by combining the duplicate hardware and app development.

Yes, I know this would upset some customers but in terms of operating efficiency, the duplicate programs are simply a waste. There’s no need to have two teams doing the same work.

And that is why I expect that Kobo will change their minds and merge as many parts of Kobo and Tolino as possible. (Kobo’s CEO is a turnaround specialist whose mandate is to reduce costs, after all.)

Mark my words: the next Tolino device will come from Kobo’s hardware partner, Netronix. This may dismay current Tolino owners, but if the new hardware is as good as the Kobo Aura H2O then the tradeoff will be worth it.

image by naiaraback1