Tolino Vision Color e-reader

Tolino is a prominent brand in the digital reading space, specifically tailored for the German-speaking market. It was founded in 2013 as a collaborative alliance between major German booksellers, including Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, and Mayersche, in partnership with Deutsche Telekom. The goal was to provide a robust open ecosystem as an alternative to proprietary platforms like Amazon Kindle.

While the brand's conceptual and marketing origin is German, the technical development and hardware production have undergone significant changes. Since 2017, the technological platform and hardware operations have been owned and managed by Rakuten Kobo, a Canadian-based subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Rakuten. Consequently, Tolino devices share a hardware architecture with Kobo e-readers and are manufactured in China, though they continue to run specialized software integrated with the German book trade alliance.