Legimi: reading without limits on every platform

Business context

In 2013, the book market was rapidly shifting towards digital solutions. Legimi, a Polish provider of an ebook subscription service with a catalogue of more than 200,000 titles, chose to expand its mobile channel to make reading more accessible, convenient and enjoyable for a broad audience.

The strategic goal was to deliver an application that would provide simple access to a rich library and ensure a comfortable reading experience anytime, anywhere. The user experience was expected to match Kindle-class solutions while supporting the company’s rapid growth in scale.

Legimi selected Leaware as the technology partner responsible for building the mobile application. The key expectations included a short time to market, multi-platform operation, and close integration with the Legimi cloud.

Challenge

The primary challenge was to create a Kindle-like application offering a consistent, intuitive and responsive reading experience on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. The interface had to be easy to use for both new and advanced users, with critical features accessible in the minimum number of clicks.

Equally important was seamless integration with the Legimi cloud, ensuring access to the full library and smooth use of the service across multiple devices. Stable performance under varying network conditions, fast content downloads, and efficient synchronisation of the library and reading settings were all expected.

Another challenge was performance and quality across a wide range of devices and operating system versions. The application had to run smoothly, launch quickly, navigate a large catalogue efficiently, and provide seamless page-turning without delays.

Solution

The team chose Xamarin, creating a single codebase for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, which reduced implementation time and made maintenance easier. The interface was designed to be clean and clear, with navigation enabling users to move quickly from discovering titles to reading them.

The application was deeply integrated with the Legimi cloud to provide instant access to the catalogue and a consistent cross-device experience. Library and reading preference synchronisation mechanisms reduced friction and brought the UX closer to the benchmark set by Kindle.

The work focused on responsiveness and reliability: start-up time, content loading and interaction smoothness were optimised, while extensive testing across multiple devices ensured stability and high performance quality on all supported platforms.