We're Buds: Amazon Optimizes Kindle Store For iPhone
Since its release on March 4, the Kindle app for iPhone has, according to Amazon, become the iPhone's most popular e-books application. Through its Whispersync technology, Amazon can also enable digital bookmarks that allow customers to pick up where they left off in their reading, whether accessing a book on iPhone, iPod touch or Kindle. The Kindle Store stocks 280,000 books, according to Amazon, including all but six of the 112 current New York Times best-sellers.
"The response to Kindle for iPhone has been tremendous. Customers love the convenience of accessing their Kindle books whenever and wherever they want, plus the convenience of not having to remember or locate their last page read because Whispersync does that for them," said Ian Freed, vice president of Amazon Kindle, in a statement. "The most common feedback we heard from customers was that they wanted a better experience for purchasing new Kindle books from their iPhones. We've been working hard to respond to that feedback with a new Web site optimized for Safari on iPhone and we're excited to do that today."
Amazon's release of the large-screen Kindle DX last week set off an explosion of speculation over its perceived e-reading competition with Apple, especially since Apple is widely rumored to be releasing a multipurpose tablet device at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
If that's the case, an Apple device that could provide not only a state-of-the-art e-reading experience but also all the other things mobile device users want could mean a serious threat to the Kindle's long-term viability as an e-reading-specific device of choice.
But as Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research said, suggested to ChannelWeb last week, Amazon is making moves to complement Apple's business model, not attempt to box it out of e-reading.
"I do think that Apple will come out with a device and among its uses will be as an e-book reader. But Amazon's business is distributing content and selling stuff. This tidy but small device is for Amazon a secondary market, just as the iTunes business is secondary for Apple," Gottheil said.