Amazon Kindle books coming to cell phones?
Kindle titles could be available soon on a variety of mobile devices.
(Credit: Amazon)Some people have criticized Amazon for essentially making the Kindle a "closed" e-book reader system. However, word from Yahoo Finance is that it might not be so closed after all and that Amazon will be making its Kindle books available on a wide variety of mobile phones in the near future.
At this point, it's unclear whether it will be offering up all its Kindle titles (the Kindle Store currently has about 230,000 e-books for sale) or just a fraction of them. Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener simply said the company is working on making Kindle books available "on a range of mobile phones."
Additionally, Google announced Friday that titles from its Book Search service will be available for reading on the iPhone and T-Mobile's G1, which uses Google's Android operating system.
Electronic book readers like Stanza from Lexcycle and the eReader from Fictionwise are already popular on the iPhone. However, getting books onto your iPhone to use with those readers is more cumbersome than downloading a book from Apple's iPhone App Store. However, if Amazon were to create an iPhone Kindle application that tied directly into its store, Lexcycle and Fictionwise would certainly have to up their games to compete.
What's this all mean? Well, we'll probably learn a lot more about Amazon's e-book strategy on Monday when it's widely expected to announce the Kindle 2. But it's clear that the company sees big bucks in publishing and distributing e-books, which cost nothing to make (in terms of raw materials) and only need to be stored on a server and not some shelf in a warehouse.
Currently, Amazon takes a nice cut from authors and publishers to sell Kindle versions of their books--up to 65 percent of the list price--though big publishers and authors get better terms.
Anyway you look it, these announcements from Google and Amazon mean you're going to be seeing and hearing about a lot more e-books--and e-book readers. It also shows that Amazon's Kindle strategy is not just about hardware but software.
Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel. E-mail David. Follow David on Twitter. 
Amazon can learn from Apple by shaping and controlling both hardware AND software, thereby making a higher quality experience for users. And let's be realistic, reading an e-book on a smartphone isn't majestic, not to mention the battery drain.
How many people do you all know that are cozying up with their smartphone to read an e-book on a tiny screen they'll have to page through every 10 seconds? Audiobooks yes, I know several that do consistently, but e-books not so much? What I've discovered to be the case for example, is that many friends will download a reader to put on the phone, but never read an full e-book on it.
It also has 24/7 wireless (Sprint EVDO 3G fast network) at *no cost* per month (not per day, not per hour nor week). The wireless is used anywhere a cellphone is, on the Sprint network.
I hope you return to read this.
it's a good Experience already
some even have audio/text making it perfect for Book reading
Amazon can in no way compete with these IPhone apps
unless they make it free,
cause most book apps
have 100s of collections and cost only a few dollars
Even google books is supposedly coming to the IPhone
why would n e one pay for Amazon !
2. it consumes more energy
3. u can share ur kindle with ur friends, but not ur iphone!
but about the amazon book app for the Iphone
isn't this wat the article is about
I really like kindle too
but feel that Amazon need to reduce prices of the books
9.99$ is just too much for a digital copy !
Furthermore, what I'm envisioning is a system where anyone who has purchased ebooks can have copies on their phones as well as on their Kindle. Therefore, like people who might have a larger media library on their itunes/ipod, but pare down their playlists for their iphones, a big time reader might keep many titles on the Kindle -- his/her "electronic library" -- but can continue reading whatever book he/she is currently reading on the phone.
I do wish they had made this new kindle with a sliding keyboard on the back and with a small bezel around the screen. Portability is important to me, and the "wafer-thin" appearance is much less important than gigantor bezel and keyboard. For the keyboard that you will use 0.01% of the time you use the Kindle to inflate the bezel of the device so much is very very sad. A thicker device with a sliding keyboard and 1/2" bezel around the screen would have been great.
And a new generation of phones are coming typified by the Toshiba with bigger touch screens. Memo to Bezos -- Great work on the original Kindle concept and the Oprah marketing connection, but we can recognize (and buy) real, continued innovation.
Tom
<a href="http://www.fastrealestate.net"> Real Estate</a>
- by melanig February 10, 2009 11:29 PM PST
- I've been downloading eBooks from BooksOnBoard to my iPhone for about a month now, and found it remarkably simple once the initial app is downloaded (http://www.booksonboard.com/index.php?F=iPhone_ebooks). While I appreciate Amazon drawing attention to eBooks, I feel that in its quest to corner the eBook market, they are a) driving out promising smaller businesses and b) promoting DRM-protected eBooks, which are not customer-friendly and end up deterring people from downloading eBooks.
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