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.While it was previously evident for anyone who wanted to connect the dots, the specific statement that a Kindle App is coming soon for the iPad (along with the Mac App that has been "coming soon" since 1974, or at least since November) is a clear indication of something we should not forget: Amazon and Apple may be adversaries or competitors, but they are also business partners on what is or will eventually be a multi-billion dollar level.
The Kindle for iPhone App and Amazon's Stanza app are already two of the top three reading Apps in Apple's Apps Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and there is little reason to doubt their capacity to sustain high market share among iPad users. The Kindle Store currently accounts for upwards of 90 percent of all ebook sales, according to widely published reports from unnamed publishing industry sources.
3 comments:
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.
I heard on one of Leo LaPorte's podcasts that the IBook app will not be installed on the IPad when you buy it. That levels the playing field. That means the user will got to the App store and look at the free reading applications and may choose the Kindle because of name recognition. But the app had better be good - one thing the IBook app has that looked very cool is the ability not to turn one page but to use the touch screen to turn multiple pages - sort of like shuffling through a book when you are trying to find something about a character introduced 100 pages previous. That is a lot easier to do than trying to get a location.
I heard on one of Leo LaPorte's podcasts that the IBook app will not be installed on the IPad when you buy it. That levels the playing field. That means the user will got to the App store and look at the free reading applications and may choose the Kindle because of name recognition. But the app had better be good - one thing the IBook app has that looked very cool is the ability not to turn one page but to use the touch screen to turn multiple pages - sort of like shuffling through a book when you are trying to find something about a character introduced 100 pages previous. That is a lot easier to do than trying to get a location.
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