Melville House Books

“Seeking to strengthen its presence on the iPhone and iPod Touch, Amazon has acquired Lexicle, the company behind Stanza, a popular free e-book application for the iPhone,” reports Brad in a New York Times story.

The significance of this? Well, for one thing, “Stanza allows users to browse a library of around 100,000 books and periodicals for the iPhone.” But perhaps more important: Many of those books are in the ePub format — the format most e-readers accept, but that Amazon has fought by insisting that it will only sell ebooks readable on its own Kindle reader … which doesn’t read ePub.

So has Amazon finally given in on what has been a bitter struggle? Could be. Reports the Times: “the move indicates Amazon wants to consolidate its position on mobile devices, particularly within Apple’s ecosystem, which may include a tablet computer later this year. The Lexcycle team should also help Amazon stake out ground on Google’s Android phones, the Palm Pre and Windows Mobile devices — and perhaps eventually turn to more open e-reading formats.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.