Amazon Snaps Up E-Book App Maker Lexcycle

Amazon on Monday confirmed it has acquired Lexcycle, the company that makes the popular e-reading desktop and Apple iPhone and iTouch application Stanza. Lexcycle was first to confirm the acquisition Monday with a posting on its Web site. The financial terms of the deal were not made public.

"We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition," wrote Lexcycle's principal developer and founder Marc Prud'hommeaux in a blog post on the site. "Customers will still be able to browse, buy and read e-books from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers."

According to Lexcycle, Stanza has more than 1.3 million users around the world. The Stanza application allows users to download and access e-books in a number of formats, and it currently supports everything from Adobe PDF to XML standard format and EPUB.

While Amazon already has a Kindle application for the iPhone, it uses Amazon's proprietary e-reading format. Stanza's support for the EPUB format, especially, would allow Amazon to give readers more choice in the format in which they access e-books and e-reading content.

"It's very early days for e-books, and we believe there is a lot of innovation ahead of us. Lexcycle is a smart, innovative company, and we look forward to working with them to innovate on behalf of readers," said Amazon spokeswoman Cinthia Portugal to The New York Times.

"We are excited to join forces with a company that has innovated on behalf of readers for over a decade and is a pioneer in e-books," Prud'hommeaux wrote. "Like Amazon, we believe there is a lot of innovation ahead for e-books and we could not think of a better company to join during this exciting time."