questions.jpgKindle Nation Daily picked up something I missed in the Amazon Blackberry announcement (see below). If you look at the release it says:

Amazon’s Whispersync technology saves and synchronizes a customer’s bookmarks across their Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, PC, BlackBerry and soon, Mac and iPad, so customers always have their reading material with them and never lose their place.

Note the “iPad” mention. It’s also nice to see a Mac mention, especially for me since I run on a Mac platform.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Amazon may be writing an iPad version but Google wrote a Google Voice app, too, and look what happened. I think the real question is whether Apple will allow competing ebook apps on the iPad. What minimal evidence we have so far — the report that the iBook app will not be a default app and will have to be downloaded separately by each customer — suggests a level playing field. But I’m waiting for some definitive word from Apple before getting too excited.

  2. Since the Kindle app is already available for the iPhone/Touch and Jobs commented that all of your apps will carry over to the iPad I don’t think it will be likely that Apple would now stop Amazon from modifying their existing Kindle app to run better on the iPad.

    But who knows… Apples App Store is screwy – one never knows why they approve some apps and reject others.

    Although I have filled up my Touch with apps I much prefer my old Windows PDA’s where I could buy whatever apps I wanted from any vendor. I don’t really like being held hostage to Apples/Jobs whims.

    I’ve been a Mac user for a couple of decades but I’m really starting to dislike many of Apples machinations of late.

  3. Let me be very clear about this. I believe that this is a HUGE deal for Amazon to have its Kindle App on the iPad. I wasn’t convinced it would happen. Here’s why this is so important.

    As I have posted here before, I do not believe that most iPad owners will spend much time reading books on it- newspapers and comic books, yes, but not books. In fact, I predict that if you survey iPad owners in a year, you will find that they spend no more than 10% of their time using the device to read books. So, if they are not reading books, they will not be buying books. Thus, my conclusion is that the iBookstore will not sell many books.

    That leaves it back to Amazon, with its 80-90% share of ebooks sales. The iPad will NOT seriously challenge that, even though Apple will sell several million devices in a year. IPad owners will certainly do some book reading. But, my guess is that most will find it easier to download the Kindle App and read Kindle books. AND, I expect that many Kindle owners will buy the iPad (I might be one at some point as, apparently, will you) and just use it as another Kindle reader.

    All in all, this is BIG deal for the Kindle store- BUT, Amazon will probably lose much of its newspaper/magazine sales (but I don’t think they are very large anyway). And, the Hearst Skiff reader (intended as a newspaper reader), in my opiion, will never launch- the iPad will kill it.

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