Amazon Buys Maker of iPhone E-Book Reader Stanza

Amazon.com is setting the stage to take e-book readers to the next level. Lexcycle on Monday announced that it will be acquired by the e-commerce giant.

Lexcycle is a year-old company that makes the iPhone e-book application Stanza. It's a free application that works with the iPhone and the iPod touch and can be used to download a selection of more than 100,000 books and magazines. Lexcycle positions it as a wireless electronic library that stays open 24/7.

"It has been an amazing experience to see Stanza grow out of our brainstormed ideas into one of the most downloaded iPhone applications," said Lexcycle founder Marc Prud'hommeaux. "Throughout this period we have attempted to listen to and innovate for our customers to provide a great e-book reading experience."

More than a Million Downloads

Lexcycle introduced the application last July, and Stanza surpassed 500,000 downloads within four months with media attention from the likes of Forbes, Time and The New York Times. By December, it had passed the one million mark. The company said more than 40,000 books are downloaded wirelessly from its online catalog every day.

Lexcycle got a head start with its iPhone e-book reader by finding its place on the Mac desktop first. Stanza Desktop addressed details that are often lacking in other software readers, including hyphenation, text columniation, automatic text scrolling, and user-friendly page and chapter navigation. Lexcycle also makes a Windows version of Stanza Desktop.

Stanza supports a variety of formats, including HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, and Rich Text Format, as well as the major e-book standards, including Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, Adobe, Microsoft LIT, Palm doc, and the International Digital Publishing Forum's new Open eBook standard. It's available in 12 languages and has users in more than 50 countries.

"We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience...