Who Owns PocketBook?

PocketBook entered the e-reader market in 2007, the same year Amazon launched the first Kindle. From Kyiv, founder Oleg Naumenko targeted a gap the US giants ignored: international users who needed devices that could read every format and every alphabet, not just one company's bookstore files.

The first device, the PocketBook 301, arrived in 2008, followed by the PocketBook 360 in 2009. Early devices won attention for their physical design and for reading formats competitors would not touch, including FB2, DJVU, and full Cyrillic support. Within a few years PocketBook became the bestselling e-reader brand across much of Eastern Europe and the Russian-speaking market.

The 2012 move to Lugano gave the company a Swiss corporate home inside Europe's regulatory and commercial mainstream, and expansion followed into Germany, France, and other EU markets. Product innovation kept pace: the waterproof Aqua, the large-format InkPad for PDF readers, and in 2018-2019 some of the industry's first color E Ink devices using E Ink's Kaleido panel, years before Amazon offered a color Kindle.

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine forced hard choices. PocketBook suspended sales in Russia, historically one of its largest markets, and continued operating with engineering staff based in Kyiv through the war. The brand survived the loss by leaning into Western European markets.

The current lineup, sold in more than 50 countries, spans the Verse compact readers, the premium Era series, the InkPad and InkPad Color large-format devices, and e-note products with stylus support. The PocketBook Store, cloud sync, and apps complete an ecosystem that treats content choice as the customer's decision, not the platform's.