Amazon acquires Portland-based Lexcycle makers of iPhone ebook app Stanza

You never know. There might be something to this whole iPhone thing and Portland.

Today, Portland-based Lexcycle was acquired by a little bookstore up in Seattle called Amazon.

“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 ebooks,” the company stated in a blog post. “Like Amazon, we believe there is a lot of innovation ahead for ebooks and we could not think of a better company to join during this exciting time.”

Portland’s own Frederic Lardinois, over at ReadWriteWeb, provides some great insights in “Consolidation in the EBook Market: Amazon Acquires Stanza“:

Stanza currently offers about 50,000 titles from partners like the Fictionwise eReader store (which is now owned by Barnes and Noble) and O’Reilly, and another 50,000 free books for sources like Project Gutenberg and Feedbooks. While Lexcycle’s most well-known application is Stanza for the iPhone and iPod touch, the company also develops desktop readers for Windows and Mac, which Amazon currently doesn’t offer.

“It’s very early days for e-books, and we believe there is a lot of innovation ahead of us,” Cinthia Portugal, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com, told the New Your Times. “Lexcycle is a smart, innovative company, and we look forward to working with them to innovate on behalf of readers.”

This is great news for Lexcycle and for the Portland iPhone development community as a whole.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. More information as it becomes available.

(Hat tip Raven Zachary)

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Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy