On Thursday, Sony Electronics, which sells e-book devices under the Reader brand, plans to announce that by the end of the year it will sell digital books only in the ePub format, an open standard created by a group including publishers like Random House and HarperCollins.
via Major news: Sony goes EPUB only; scraps its own format!! | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home.
This is a big deal and puts some pressure on Amazon to open up the Kindle to more formats natively and let its ebooks onto other devices.