On Monday, Amazon.com acquired Lexcycle and its Stanza e-book application for the iPhone and iPod touch. This just shows despite releasing its own Kindle e-book reader for the iPhone and iPod touch about 1 1/2 months ago, Amazon.com is not going to stand pat in the e-book space.There's no press release by Amazon.com, and only a short Lexcycle blog post, so we're left with many questions, such as how this affects Amazon's own Kindle e-book reader, the price of the acquisition, things like that. In the blog post, Lexcycle said:
We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers.Besides Lexcycle's iPhone and iPod touch apps, the company also has desktop readers for Windows and Mac, which Amazon currently doesn't have. Unlike the Kindle, Stanza uses the "epub" format, an open standard supported by the International Digital Publishing Forum that many publishers use to create e-books.
Additionally, you can browse --- and buy --- directly from both the mobile and desktop versions of Stanza. One criticism of the Kindle iPhone app was the need to buy through a desktop browser.
Is Amazon going to continue to have two different, and competing e-book apps in its catalog, or is it going to kill one and just use the Stanza development team to improve the Kindle app, which many have classified as "basic?" Time will tell.
2 comments:
I still think that this is way too much consolidation in the eBook market. We certainly don't want to have an almost monopoly like in the OS space.
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