Here’s one giant kick in the teeth for Apple and its App Store policies.
Amazon has today launched its new Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader web app, which offers the full Kindle library as an HTML web page, offering the ability to read, and, more importantly, buy books from your browser. That’s more important because it means Amazon no longer has to abide by Apple’s laws for the selling of content inside an iOS app.
It also means Apple loses out on 30% of the revenue…
While there is currently no iPhone or iPod touch version of the website available, the whole thing does work flawlessly with the iPad’s mobile Safari and even goes so far as to support offline reading.
With the web-based experience acting just as the App Store Kindle app, and having the added benefit of the Kindle store being built right in, it’s feasible many will simply move right on over to the Cloud Reader.
Check out Amazon’s full press release below for all the details:
“We are excited to take this leap forward in our ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere’ mission and help customers access their library instantly from anywhere,” said Dorothy Nicholls, Director, Amazon Kindle. “We have written the application from the ground up in HTML5, so that customers can also access their content offline directly from their browser. The flexibility of HTML5 allows us to build one application that automatically adapts to the platform you’re using – from Chrome to iOS. To make it easy and seamless to discover new books, we’ve added an integrated, touch optimized store directly into Cloud Reader, allowing customers one click access to a vast selection of books.”
Features of Kindle Cloud Reader include: – An immersive view of your entire Kindle library, with instant access to all of your books – Start reading over 950,000 Kindle books instantly within your browser – An embedded Kindle Store optimized for your web browser makes it seamless to discover new books and start reading them instantly – New Kindle Store for iPad is built from the ground up for iPad’s touch interface – Your current book is automatically made available for offline use, and you can choose to save a book for reading offline at any time – Receive automatic software updates without the need to download new software – Select any book to start reading, customize the page layout to your desired font size, text color, background color, and more – View all of the notes, highlights, and bookmarks that you’ve made on other Kindle apps or on Kindle – Sync your last page read across your Kindle and free Kindle apps so you can always pick up where you left off.
Kindle Cloud Reader is available for Safari on iPad, Safari on desktop and Chrome starting today. Kindle Cloud Reader on the iPad is optimized for the size and unique touch interface of iPad. Without even leaving the app, customers can start shopping in the Kindle Store and will find a unique and immersive shopping experience built specifically for iPad’s Safari browser.
Kindle Cloud Reader will be available on additional web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, the BlackBerry PlayBook browser, and other mobile browsers, in the coming months.”
[TiPB]