Tech Award for Mobile Books Firm

I-Cue, the London-Based publisher of books-on-mobile, has been awarded The Red Herring 100 Europe award, which acknowledges the year's top 100 new companies for innovation and technology. Previous winners of the award include Google, Yahoo and Skype.
I-Cue enables mobile phone users to store and read entire book collections on their handsets. The system works by flashing one word at a time on the screen at a speed controlled by the user, who can pause, rewind or fast forward words either one at a time or by sentence, paragraph or chapter.
Red Herring's editorial team selected the award winners by rigorously evaluating more than 700 private companies through a careful analysis of financial data and subjective criteria.
"We've received this award because we've demonstrated innovation in an established sector by making powerful technology simple to use” says I-Cue, managing director, Jane Tappuni. “It works just like downloading a game or a ring tone to a phone, and transferring books takes just seconds from the WAP site."
The product is targeted at phone users who want to read books on the go, or who need access to a large number of books in a small and portable device. More than 400 books are already available for immediate download.
The award was presented by Red Herring at the Venture Market Europe 2006 conference, which opened yesterday and closes tomorrow, at The Westin Paris Hotel. To trial I-Cue, text "freebook" to 64888.
Other mobile companies in the Top 100 include Cognima, which enables users to send photos directly form their phones to several photo-sharing websites, including Flickr and Buzznet;  Mobile Commerce, which offers mobile search and transaction services; Otodio, whose software enables print publishers to turn their printed content into audio files for downloading onto mobile handsets; voicemail-to-SMS company SpinVox; and Picsel, whose technology enables mobile users to browse PC documents as they would on a computer, and who we have previously featured here.