Amazon's Kindle hits the iPhone
If there was ever any question that Amazon's (AMZN) Jeff Bezos is more interested in selling books than selling Kindle electronic book readers, the answer showed up on the iTunes App Store overnight Wednesday: a free application to read Kindle books on Apple's (AAPL) iPhone.
Given that there are more than 17 million iPhones in circulation and probably not more than a few hundred thousand Kindles, Amazon has, with a single stroke, vastly increased the size of its potential readership without necessarily boosting sales for its $359 reader.
The app, which you can download here, works pretty much as advertised. You can't order books directly from the iPhone — you have to do that from a Kindle or through a Web browser. But once you've established that you have an Amazon account, the books you've ordered show up instantly — and wirelessly — on the screen, thanks to the magic of Amazon's new Whispersync technology. If you've started to read a book on a Kindle, Whispersync is smart enough to remember what page you were on.
There are plenty of titles to choose from in the Kindle Books section of the Amazon store — more than 240,000, according to Amazon's press release — although as you might expect, the list is heavily tilted toward current bestsellers (104 of the 112 titles on New York Times' list, most for $9.99 each).
At the store, you can arrange books by popularity ("The Shack" by William P. Young currently tops that list), customer review (Ron Paul's "The Revolution") or publication date ("Eye of the Beholder," Jade Falconer).
But you get a better feel for the range of books available when you list them by price, high-to-low or low-to-high. The most expensive title is something called "Selected Nuclear Materials and Engineering Systems (Part 4)," which sells for $6,431.20. On the other end of the spectrum, there are pages and pages of books priced at $0.00, including Arnold Bennett's "Sacred and Profane Love" and Hugh Dalton's "With British Guns in Italy," to name a couple at random.
The books are certainly readable on the iPhone, although I'm not sure anybody is going to make it through Doris Kearns Goodwin's 944-page "Team of Rivals" (No. 16 on the Kindle bestseller list) on a 3.5-inch screen. The pages are formatted for Kindle, not the iPhone, which creates some unfortunate typographical effects. At right, for example, is what the preface page of Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father" looks like on the iPhone, with an ugly and unnecessary break in the word "preface."
All in all, the reading experience on Kindle for iPhone falls somewhere between Google's (GOOG) free iPhone Book Search app, with 1.5 million titles to choose from but minimal formatting, and Andrew Kaz's $2.99 Classics, which offers only a dozen or so books, but each of them specially formatted for the iPhone screen.
And that's probably as it should be.
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That is great as one of my favorite publishers, Red Rose Publishing is also there for one and all to get their books. I just love their verity and price. They are great books at an excellent price.
That is great as one of my favorite publishers, Red Rose Publishing is also there for one and all to get their books. I just love their verity and price. They are great books at an excellent price.
well this is useful for people on the move wanting something to keep themselves occupied on a long commute. And I certainly recommend Phaze titles for that!
well this is useful for people on the move wanting something to keep themselves occupied on a long commute. And I certainly recommend Phaze titles for that!
They have Jade Falconer books on Kindle? I'm surprised, thats both very niche and very progressive at the same time.
They have Jade Falconer books on Kindle? I'm surprised, thats both very niche and very progressive at the same time.
As the Kindle App states, you CAN download directly to the iPhone using the Safari browser and the full Amazon site. I checked forst thing this morning and it worked perfectly. Might be nicer if you could do it directly from the App, bit it works fine as advertised. No PC Or Mac necessary.
As the Kindle App states, you CAN download directly to the iPhone using the Safari browser and the full Amazon site. I checked forst thing this morning and it worked perfectly. Might be nicer if you could do it directly from the App, bit it works fine as advertised. No PC Or Mac necessary.
No thanks, I will take the physical book. They have style, character and class…never to be matched by any e-device.
No thanks, I will take the physical book. They have style, character and class…never to be matched by any e-device.
Given that the iPhone has an addressable market of at least 19M, (I'm adding the 17M sold by Xmas to the 2M minimum sold in Jan and Feb), and the iPod touch has an addressable market at a minimum 4M units, for a total of 23M units capable of using the Kindle Reader app. Given that 23M units far exceeds the Kindle sales of just over 500k, one would expect Amazon to provide a better app. It needs its own searchable catalog, not a redirect to mobile Safari. And, the least Amazon can do, is reformat e-books to eliminate the odd artifacts that you note. The free readers like Stanza and eReader do a very nice job of customized formatting. And, Classics, which costs very little does a superb job. Given that Kindle books cost quite alot more, per book, you'd think they would at least aspire to be the best-in-class book reader app.
Given that the iPhone has an addressable market of at least 19M, (I'm adding the 17M sold by Xmas to the 2M minimum sold in Jan and Feb), and the iPod touch has an addressable market at a minimum 4M units, for a total of 23M units capable of using the Kindle Reader app. Given that 23M units far exceeds the Kindle sales of just over 500k, one would expect Amazon to provide a better app. It needs its own searchable catalog, not a redirect to mobile Safari. And, the least Amazon can do, is reformat e-books to eliminate the odd artifacts that you note. The free readers like Stanza and eReader do a very nice job of customized formatting. And, Classics, which costs very little does a superb job. Given that Kindle books cost quite alot more, per book, you'd think they would at least aspire to be the best-in-class book reader app.
Little by little Apple is making the iPhone into what a lot of companies are seeking, one device of convergence. I recently got an iPHone and went on my first business trip and have to say, never took my laptop out of my bag. Sure, other phones have most similar applications I used such as maps to find locations, web browser to look up info, email, etc, but do they allow you to on the fly go get an application to sketch drawings with the client? I have to say, for convenience sake, the iPhone is getting there. yeah, there are still issues and shortcomings, but from what I can tell, they are the closes to an 'all in one' device in the market coupled with ease of use and convenience.
Little by little Apple is making the iPhone into what a lot of companies are seeking, one device of convergence. I recently got an iPHone and went on my first business trip and have to say, never took my laptop out of my bag. Sure, other phones have most similar applications I used such as maps to find locations, web browser to look up info, email, etc, but do they allow you to on the fly go get an application to sketch drawings with the client? I have to say, for convenience sake, the iPhone is getting there. yeah, there are still issues and shortcomings, but from what I can tell, they are the closes to an 'all in one' device in the market coupled with ease of use and convenience.
Glad to see this today…
I did notice you can adjust the font size so the formating issue can be minimized.
It seems to work well enough with the sample I downloaded.
This was the only way that Amazon would have been able to reach me with e-books…and it should pay off well for them.
Glad to see this today…
I did notice you can adjust the font size so the formating issue can be minimized.
It seems to work well enough with the sample I downloaded.
This was the only way that Amazon would have been able to reach me with e-books…and it should pay off well for them.
Phillip-Elmer-SmartWit,
How does this affect iPhone sales, do you think? How about some provocative statements
about how 'Apple is hype – a day later – Not!'
column?
Phillip-Elmer-SmartWit,
How does this affect iPhone sales, do you think? How about some provocative statements
about how 'Apple is hype – a day later – Not!'
column?
I've been reading classic books on my iPhone using the free Stanza app for months. I find the reading experience perfectly satisfactory. Fonts are crisp and adjustable. Navigation is effortless. The backlighting lets me read in bed. The books I am reading are always with me, nothing extra to carry. And, unlike the Kindle, illustrations can be in vivid high-def zoomable color. This is a big deal for Amazon and the iPhone.
I've been reading classic books on my iPhone using the free Stanza app for months. I find the reading experience perfectly satisfactory. Fonts are crisp and adjustable. Navigation is effortless. The backlighting lets me read in bed. The books I am reading are always with me, nothing extra to carry. And, unlike the Kindle, illustrations can be in vivid high-def zoomable color. This is a big deal for Amazon and the iPhone.
Opening the Kindle books to iPhone is a great idea for developing a market for e-book sales among an audience who has demonstrated their willingness to pay hundreds of dollars for an electronic device.
It also generates a highly targeted list for their email campaigns.
http://billock.net/blog/2009/08/07/amazons-iphone-kindle-strategy-take-2/