Amazon Extends Kindle eBook Reader to iPhone

by Dean Evans at Thursday 5th March, 2009 at 11:34 am [0 comments]

Last month, when Amazon launched its $359 Kindle 2 eBook reader, I speculated that what we really needed was a Kindle application, not another iPod for books.

On March 4th Amazon rolled out a Kindle application for the iPhone and iPod touch on iTunes. This opens up access to a selection of content available via the Kindle store.

According to Amazon, it’s the “best reading experience available on your iPhone or iPod touch”.

The application automatically synchronizes your last page read between devices with Amazon Whispersync. It also enables you to adjust the text size, add bookmarks, and view annotations.

The iPhone vs. Kindle 2

How good is it? “The actual reading experience is sort of a mixed bag compared with the purpose-built Kindle device,” writes Andy Ihnatko in the Chicago Sun-Times. “

But he does go on to say that he likes “that the iPhone has a crisp, backlit screen instead of the crisp but flat e-ink display of the Kindle. I love that the iPhone is always in my shirt or pants pocket wherever I go, whether I anticipated getting stuck in line at the post office or not.”

Of course, there are limitations. The new app doesn’t replicate the full functionality of the Kindle 2 – Amazon doesn’t want to cannibalise its own market. So while the iPhone/iPod touch app gives users access to 240,000 books, it doesn’t include Kindle-delivered newspapers, magazines and blogs.

The iPhone/iPod touch application also doesn’t include the Kindle 2′s text-to-speech feature. And the iTunes app is currently only available in the US.

Nevertheless, it shows just how seriously Amazon takes eBooks. There’s a good chance that we’ll see versions of the Kindle application developed for Microsoft, Android, Blackberry and Palm devices in the future.

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