Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks to the media at a press conference announcing the release of the new Kindle 2 electronic reader in New York City on February 9, 2009.
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Amazon buys Kindle-competitor Stanza
By Chris Gaylord | 04.27.09
For a long while, Stanza was the iPhone’s answer to the Amazon Kindle. The free ebook program became one of Apple’s more popular apps by allowing users to tap into 100,000 books and periodicals.
Now, Kindle and Stanza are now under one roof.
Amazon bought Lexcycle, the year-old company behind Stanza. The announcement came through a Lexcycle blog post today.
This purchase shows Amazon’s commitment to digital books, a market that it dove into in 2007 with the $399 Kindle e-reader. The online retailer pushed deeper with a $50 price drop, second-edition hardware, expanded library of e-book titles, its own Kindle app for the iPhone, and now the acquisition of Stanza.
“We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition,” says the Lexcycle announcement. “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.”
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2. Rohit | 04.28.09
I worry when a single company ends up dominating a technology. This has already happened with Microsoft’s Windows. Is it going to happen with e-Books?
3. Nitin | 04.28.09
An open-source product for e-books from Sun - Oracle should please any iPhone users.
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1. awe215 | 04.27.09
I was hoping Google would use Stanza to make it’s mobile google books available for offline viewing. I wonder if this doesn’t put the kibash on that happening (maybe it never would have anyhow). But, an offline iphone version of google books would be great.