Why did Amazon.com, Inc. acquire the makers of the Stanza e-reader yesterday? Perhaps they saw the future over at at Apple Inc., a long-rumored “media pad” that could someday rival the Amazon Kindle.

A recent Business Week article gives a tantalizing glimpse of this potential development for the e-reader industry: “The [rumored] media pad is smaller than an Amazon (AMZN) Kindle electronic reader, but its touchscreen is bigger than the Kindle’s, says the person who has seen it. Carriers such as Verizon and AT&T are keen on striking deals to supply wireless Internet access to these new small computing devices, such as netbooks, which represent revenue growth opportunities.”

If that rumor should come true, it appears that Amazon wants a piece of both markets–owning the leading stand-alone e-reader and the two most popular e-readers for Apple mobile devices. For more speculation about what this means for the industry, Mike Cane and TeleRead both have insightful analysis. (Via Publishers Lunch)