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Snapped up by Amazon, Lexcycle claims it won’t change app or ‘user experience’
April 27, 2009 | 3:58 pm
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By David Rothman
Hmm. Just the other day I was speculating that Lexcycle—the developers of Stanza for the iPhone—might be fodder for an acquisition by Adobe or Google. Was Amazon reading the TeleBlog just then? Guess who’s just snapped up Lexycle, perhaps in part to forestall the possibility I had in mind. Yes, we’re past April 1. This is da news, really.
It is, frankly, too early to say what will happen to Fictionwise, Adobe and other partners of Lexcycle. The New York Times quotes a Lexcycle blog post: “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.” Lexcycle may mean this absolutely. But will Amazon? Remember, we were expecting Amazon to do ePub instead of burdening us with another eBabeller in the form of the Kindle format.
Then again, Stanza is the best ePub-capable app for the iPhone right now, and maybe this will actually make Amazon care about the Pub standard. Maybe. Too early to say. I don’t have ESP, just skepticism about Amazon’s long-term motives. Shoot down my skepticism, Jeff! Do the right thing and get behind ePub.
And now, excuse me. Wouldn’t you know it, I’m caught in the clutches of another corporate giant, Comcast, which is here to deal with some Internet hassles I’ve been having. Stay tuned for more thoughts on the above and on the DRM angle, too. Will Amazon do its own DRMed ePub? And what about the tech-related Fictionwise and Adobe deals?
Related: Google news roundup.
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Comments:
Is Amazon likely to start selling its books in anything other than its existing format? Two formats? I doubt it. But Amazon always wants to find ways of selling to more people.
So it seems sensible that their acquisition of Lexcycle could be to speed up the process of developing apps for non-Kindle devices, to expand the range of devices that can read Amazon’s e-books. As they have already embraced the iPhone, and Lexcycle has made clear that they wanted to develop Stanza for other devices (meaning more customers), aiding that process would make sense. As I’ve said before, not everyone in the world owns an iPhone.
The alternative would be that Amazon wants to quash non-Kindle access to their store. This doesn’t seem to make sense, as it means they are limiting their potential customer base.
The third possibility, that Amazon wants to quash ePub, just seems ludicrous. The genie’s already out of that bottle. But if future Stanza apps support AZW and not ePub (or just not support it as well as AZW), that would track with Amazon thinking.
They have “embraced and extended” the Mobipocket format to where it’s incompatible with original Mobi DRM, and won’t let people read Mobi DRM books on the Kindle—or on the iPhone, as they have (apparently) prevented Mobi from releasing a reader for that device.
Up to this point, it appears that all they’ve wanted to do was keep Mobi—used by many DRM-using competitor e-book stores—off of the iPhone, and put their non-Mobi-reading Kindle app on iPhone instead.
Wonder if Stanza could now incorporate Mobipocket DRM into its reader with impunity, given that Amazon owns both it and them?
Perhaps The Onion will soon do one of their celebrated news reports on Amazon. The topic? A small company on the leading edge of book distribution that Amazon is NOT buying.
They could interview a (fake) CEO lamenting that, despite all his efforts, he hasn’t been able to get Amazon to return his calls.”I just can’t understand it,” he says, “we’re doing everything right and yet they won’t call. And when I tried to talk to Bezos at a recent conference, he turned around and ran away.”