The Times reports that Vodafone will today launch a service bringing audio books to mobile phones. The operator has reportedly signed a deal with GoSpoken.com to offer its customers download access to books that will cost between £5 and £15. The purchases will be added to monthly Vodafone bills. The Times reports that GoSpoken.com has already signed up every leading publisher in Britain, including Penguin, Random House and HarperCollins, and is moving into Europe. HSPA technology is believed to enable download of a three-hour audio book in three minutes.

The move follows the launch of Amazon’s ‘Kindle’ device – a wireless-enabled electronic book – in November last year via US operator Sprint. In August, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney forecast that Amazon will sell 378,000 Kindles this year, accounting for US$1.1 billion or 4 percent of Amazon’s total revenues by 2010. Meanwhile, Forbes notes that the iPhone is beating Amazon’s Kindle as the most popular e-book reader, thanks to the free Stanza book-reading application offered via the App Store. Since July, Stanza has reportedly been downloaded more than 395,000 times and continues to be installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day.