In bringing its Kindle e-book reader to a much larger audience through the iPhone and iPod Touch, Amazon.com Inc may benefit — even if the additional users don’t translate into actual sales of the US$359 Kindle device.
Seattle-based Amazon rolled out the free program on Wednesday, bringing several Kindle functions to the Apple gadgets’ smaller screens. The application can be downloaded from Apple’s online application store and lets iPhone and iPod Touch users read the same electronic books that Kindle owners can buy on Amazon.com.
The application’s release comes a few weeks after Amazon unveiled the second-generation Kindle. The company has not released sales figures for the device, which it began selling in late 2007, but Citi Investment Research analyst Mark Mahaney estimated the company sold 500,000 Kindles last year.
PHOTO: AP
Regardless of how many Kindles have been snapped up, the availability of the program on the iPhone and iPod gives Amazon millions more potential e-book buyers — 4.3 million 3G iPhones alone were sold in the US last year.
And while Amazon hopes that the application will mean increased sales for both e-books and the Kindle device, Creative Strategies Inc tech analyst Tim Bajarin said he believes the former is the more important result in extending Kindle capabilities to Apple’s products.
Amazon has 240,000 books available for the Kindle and its library will grow. The more e-books you have, the more people you need to buy them, he said.
“If you’ve only limited it to a Kindle [device] audience, you don’t have exponential growth,” he said.
He thinks the application will have a “significant impact” on people discovering e-books.
Stephen Ju, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, thinks Amazon simply wants to sell books.
“I don’t think they care if you don’t buy a Kindle if they can sell you a book. I think that’s what they really care about at the end of the day,” he said.
That’s not to say that analysts think the application will cannibalize sales of the Kindle device. Bajarin said the smaller screen was a good way to introduce consumers to e-books, but thinks serious readers will buy the Kindle as the economy improves.
And in its current form, the application is not a game changer for Amazon, Ju said, in part because it lacks an e-book purchasing feature.
Users must access the Web browser on their iPhone, iPod or computer to buy the books. But if the company adds this, he thinks it would set it apart from other e-book applications that are available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, like Lexycle’s Stanza e-book reader.
Stanza allows users to read e-books in the “epub” format, which is an open standard supported by the International Digital Publishing Forum that many publishers use to create e-book files.
The Kindle does not support the format, but Sony Corp’s competing Reader device does.
Michael Smith, executive director of the digital group, said he was not worried the release of a Kindle application would eclipse the “epub” format, since it will bring attention to the e-book market.
Publisher Simon & Schuster welcomed the program’s release.
Ellie Hirschhorn, head of digital operations, said the publisher hoped to see various platforms that get e-books to readers.
“The more choice, the more ubiquitous, the more content readers have access to, the better for the ecosystem,” she said.
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