Amazon Buys Stanza

I still remember how a few weeks ago people were talking about how Stanza was going to challenge Amazon Kindle by letting people read e-books on their iPhones. That’s before Amazon came out with its own application for the iPhone platform. It seems Amazon is not done with its adventures in the mobile world. Lexcycle has now announced that it has been purchased by Amazon. That will put Kindle for iPhone and Stanza under one roof. With this move, Amazon has taken out one of its top competitors on iPhone. Interestingly enough, the people behind Stanza believe there will be no major changes to how Stanza operates:

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.

I am sure Amazon will add its branding material to Stanza at some point. And while I would love to see both Kindle and Stanza co-exist, I don’t believe it makes sense to confuse the consumers and provide two competing applications (is Amazon planning to make one a premium iPhone app?).

This is a great move by Amazon. It has understood early on that you can’t rely on hardware to dominate the e-book market. That’s why Amazon is bringing the Kindle platform to mobile devices such as the iPhone. While companies such as Sony are focusing so much on making their hardware as powerful as possible, Amazon is pursuing a long-term strategy that will put Amazon in the position of dominance in this market for years to come.