I understand that but I think the inferred point was "drop DRM and people will buy from multiple sources" which I don't think is true. My point is people don't want to use multiple services. If Amazon makes it easy to purchase books people will stay with Amazon regardless of DRM.
I'll give you an example. I was tempted to buy books from Apress today (they have a all e-books are $15 special). But I weighed the pros and cons and decided to buy them from Amazon instead for an average of $7 more per book because I like having books in my Kindle library that are automatically accessible.
So DRM is irrelevant but it isn't the main deterrent.
I have a kindle, and I very much like the convenience of being able to manage my library by easily moving books on and off of the kindle wherever I am. However, any time I buy a book from Amazon I first check if a DRM-free alternative is available elsewhere. I don't do this because of principled opposition to DRM (I am opposed to DRM on principle, but it's not why I do this); I do it because I want my books to be as portable as possible, not locked in to any one merchant, platform, or device. Unfortunately, in most cases the only option is a file with some other form of DRM that won't work on my kindle. If the big publishers stopped using DRM, I would stop buying ebooks from Amazon and buy all of them directly from the publishers.
If such were to happen, I'm sure that other people would offer cloud services that would allow you to upload your eBooks from wherever you buy them and then access them from your device over your choice of wireless carrier. If they lost enough market share, I'm sure that even Amazon would start offering such a service.
I think Barnes and Noble has the potential to mount a decent challenge with the Nook - I've been seeing more and more of them around. I can see the ease or difficulty of moving books between the two affecting its performance.
If it's easy to buy from B&N and put it on the Kindle, and buy from Amazon and put it on the Nook, I can see people purchasing from both stores.
> My point is people don't want to use multiple services.
And the OP's point hinges on the idea that while a given person will want to use only one service, there's less likely to be a single service that everybody uses, with each consumer buying from the service of their choice, knowing that their book can be read on any device.
I'll give you an example. I was tempted to buy books from Apress today (they have a all e-books are $15 special). But I weighed the pros and cons and decided to buy them from Amazon instead for an average of $7 more per book because I like having books in my Kindle library that are automatically accessible.
So DRM is irrelevant but it isn't the main deterrent.