In 2003 after the failure of Cytale (the first European company to make an ebook reader) two former engineers of Cytale, Laurent Picard and Michaël Dahan, bought the intellectual property of the Cytale reading device, the
Cybook Gen1. They founded the company, Bookeen, to produce dedicated ebook reading devices. Their first product was the Cybook Gen1. The Cybook Gen1 was Bookeen's only product until 2006/2007, when they began exploring
E-ink screens. At the time, E-Ink screens were a new technology and claimed to have a near paper-like appearance that did not cause eyestrain. In late 2007 Bookeen began selling the
Cybook Gen3, their first eBook reader to use an E-Ink screen. At the end of 2008, Bookeen started to claim future support for the
ePub eBook format. The current firmware supporting it for all models; however, this firmware can not support the older Mobipocket format. Another firmware with support for Mobipocket is still made available so the user can select the desired format. a smaller version of the
Cybook Gen3 but with some improvements: improved shape,
accelerometer, 1 GB of user memory, and a 400Mhz CPU. June 2010 Bookeen published a much improved firmware for Gen3 and Opus devices. In August 2011, Bookeen launched its own
e-book store called BookeenStore.com with ePub and PDF format books, and a selection of free e-books with no DRM. (Note: this site now has DRM.) In 2014, Bookeen launched the Cybook Muse, the new 6 inches connected ebook reader and later in 2014, the Cybook Ocean, an 8 inches connected ebook reader. In 2022, the company was placed under
administration, and was acquired by Cultura's subsidiary Vivlio, another e-book manufacturer. ==Products==