Amazon is not going out without a… "compromise"? It makes total sense from Amazon's perspective that if you can't beat them, join them. For Amazon I'm sure it's more about selling content than it is selling eBook readers. Selling the Kindle devices I'm sure was more about selling more content than it was about selling the actual hardware. So I'm not surprised at all to see the announcement of a "Kindle for Tablets" App. It was just last week when Amazon also announced the shipping of the long awaited Kindle App for Mac. So now you'll be able to take advantage of your Kindle books just about anywhere and for the customer that's the right thing to do. This also means seeing Kindle books in COLOR! Granted Kindles are less expensive than iPads, but iPads do so much more! I'm wondering if this is the beginning of the end of Amazon's Kindle hardware business?
This of course also begs the question, will Apple allow competing Book Reading Apps on the iPad? There was already a Kindle App for iPhone and there wasn't a problem with this because Apple didn't have an iBooks Store. Well now they do! So it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming weeks. Is Apple more concerned about selling iPads or iBooks eBooks?
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
I've used the iPhone Kindle for over a year and enjoy it. I love being able to keep some professional reference texts always with me and it helps me with a slight visual tracking problem (smaller width of text helps). I was excited that the Kindle for Mac finally came out but disappointed in it's execution. I've not been able to highlight text on it, something I do constantly with my professional reading. Am I just missing something? I know you can bookmark but that's less helpful to me than a highlight.