Amazon has released a free app on the Apple Store that gives the iPhone and iPod Touch access to the same electronic bookstore as the Kindle. Less than a month after the much publicised release of the Kindle 2, the Apple devices now have access to the same 240,000 book library.
Amazon has released a cross-device feature called Whispersync. This allows a reader with both devices to save their place in a book on a Kindle, and pick up later in the same place on their iPhone.
From the release:
“We are excited to bring the new Kindle application to Apple’s App Store and think customers are going to love how easy and fun it is to read their Kindle books on the iPhone and iPod touch,” said Amazon Kindle vice president Ian Freed. “Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch is a great way for customers to catch up on their current book wherever they are.”
What we think?
It’s not just the year of video and music this year. Ebooks have had a great showing on mobile devices. Not just the Kindle – Google released 15 million books on smartphone earlier this year, just a few weeks after 3UK launched an audio/text service. A lot of people are acknowledging that mobile books could be big business. So it’s a good move by Amazon to open it’s library on to the iPhone. For that kind of service, not releasing an iPhone app is really just shooting yourself in the foot. Whispersync, while a good service, feels like wishful thinking to me. Why would an iPod owner invest in a Kindle when they can now access the same books? Maybe Amazon is hoping that the eye-strain (maybe that should be iStrain) inflicted on smartphone readers will drive them to buy Kindles?
