Looking to promote the utility of the Mobipocket Reader, an e-book reader designed by a French software developer that works on every major PDA operating system, Franklin Electronic Publishers has reached an agreement with Sony to bundle the Mobipocket Reader 4.4 along with a copy of the Franklin Thesaurus e-book on selected Sony Clié handheld devices.

Franklin has a minority stake in Mobipocket and has partnered with the software developer to bring its e-book reader to the U.S. market. The reader can be used on any PDA and provides access to about 4,000 e-books in the Mobipocket or Franklin e-book formats. The newest version of the Reader is designed to take advantage of the latest screen and memory card technology.