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When online retailer Amazon launched its electronic book service, complete with ebook reader Kindle, last year, it heralded a new approach to mobile services - with devices optimized for one application and delivered through a strong retail brand, the carrier connection being invisible behind the user experience. Amazon has not yet brought Kindle to Europe, and this has given Vodafone a chance to try to ensure that a similar ebook service over here would put the mobile operator right back at center stage. The carrier will launch an audiobook service for cellphones this week, initially in its home territory of the UK.

Vodafone is working with specialist audiobook company GoSpoken.com on this offering, and has hinted heavily that it will use it as testing ground for a fully fledged ebook service, should market response be positive. This would likely involve a dedicated device like the Kindle, but with Vodafone rather than third party branding to the fore.

Customers will be able to download books for between £5 ($9) and £15, with the purchases added to their regular Vodafone bills. GoSpoken.com claims to have already signed up every leading publisher in the UK, including Penguin, Random House and HarperCollins, and is now moving into mainland Europe. On an HSPA connection, a three-hour audiobook will take about three minutes to download.

Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney recently forecast, in a research note, that Amazon would sell 378,000 Kindles this year, accounting for $1.1bn in revenue or 4% of Amazon's total, by 2010. However, some analysts believe users will prefer to read or listen to books on their regular smartphones, rather than carrying another device - which, if true, would play into the hands of the carrier brands. The iPhone is reportedly being used widely as an ebook reader in the US, via a free application called Stanza, available in the App Store. Since July, Stanza has reportedly been downloaded more than 395,000 times.

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