Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has now taken complete control of audiobook retailer Audible.de, a German off-shoot of the US Audible.com site it acquired last year. Audible.com started Audible.de in August 2004 as a venture with publishers Random House and Lübbe publisher.
Amazon bought 12-year-old Audible.com and its UK subsidiary last year for $300 million but the German question was unresolved. Now Deutsche-Startups.de and BooksBlog.ch report the e-tailer has submitted the outright takeover of Audible.de to Germany’s Federal Cartel Office. It claims 30,000 German, English, Spanish and French titles from over 800 publishers. Although the acquisition might make one wonder whether Amazon’s new roster of audiobooks might end up making it to an audiobook-compatible Kindle in Europe, don’t get too excited – even version two of the ebook reader is without a release date on these shores, where mobile networks aren’t compatible with the Whispernet technology that delivers content wirelessly to the device.