- Image via CrunchBase
Amazon solidified its position as an e-book provider by acquiring Stanza, the most downloaded application for e-books on the iPhone. This goes to prove that Amazon is willing and able to move quickly to control e-reading experiences and the e-book storefront. While the Kindle continues to draw attention, Amazon’s broader strategy is decoupled from their device. It’s about controlling the storefront and closing out competitors for a reading experience that is evolving in the digital space.
(Thanks to Howard Ratner for the Tweet alerting me to this.)
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Hopefully Amazon will incorporate some of the Stanza interface into their weak Kindle iPhone app.
The obvious worry here is that by eliminating the competition, we’ll either end up with a monopoly where Amazon rules the e-books world, or their severely DRM-limited products will fail to catch on, squashing the nascent e-books market.
Posted by David Crotty | Apr 28, 2009, 10:25 am..or amazon could do to stanza what corel did after it acquired jasc paintshop pro. jasc was 99 bucks and did everything one might want an image editor to do. the paintshop pro that i knew and loved: r.i.p.
it would be a real shame if amazon killed stanza. unless i am mistaken, its desktop client is presently the only program that will convert pdf’s to kindle format, if one is a mac user.
Posted by thorn | Apr 28, 2009, 2:33 pm