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Kindle for Android will arrive this summer, with in-app book buying
Amazon's getting ready to go to war with Apple and the iPad in the e-book market, and it's about to bring out the big guns. Kindle for Android will reportedly launch this summer, with a feature that other mobile Kindle apps (including Kindle for iPad and iPhone, ahem) don't have: the ability to buy books directly from the app. The iPhone and iPad apps would have that ability, too, but Apple would count the books as in-app purchases under its App Store terms of service. That means Amazon would have to let Apple take a 30% commission, and that's no way to stay ahead of the iPad bookstore.
The Kindle apps still have the advantage of seamless cross-platform syncing, so they're viable even if the Kindle hardware loses out to tablets like the iPad.
[via TechCrunch]
Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsTheOneAndOnlyJHMay 19th 2010 12:27PM
Android: ++1
Apple: -1/+1 (?)
This is definitely a plus for Android. Now people who own Kindle's can read their books on the go when they realize they have time to kill and didn't remember to bring their Kindle. I think it's great, because it will also serve as the primary reader for some people and expand Amazon's reach even farther.
For Apple... Well, for the company, it's a positive. People who don't own a Kindle will just stick to Apple's iBooks app and it will give Apple more sales than Amazon. But for Kindle owner's it's a negative, because they would end up with two libraries: one for Apple iBooks and one for Amazon Kindle. As a consumer, more choice is better.
Out of Curiosity, can you buy books on Amazon.com through Safari to add them to your library and then download them in your app? It would be a little extra work, but that would be a decent workaround if you want to use Kindle for your iProduct.
P.S. No, I am not trying to bash Apple. I just wanted to point out that this is a more complex matter than it seems. By not allowing Apple to take a cut of in-app book sales, Amazon may be giving Apple the entire purchase price in iBooks. It might benefit Amazon to work out a deal with Apple (say 5-10%) so that they at least make some profit rather than no in-app sales at all. This would allow Amazon to reach more people who currently use iBooks.
nikescarMay 19th 2010 5:59PM
I use FBReader on my Android phone. It's a very nice eReader program and best of all it's free (although you'll probably want to donate after you see it in action). It even has in app downloads using open source book repositories.