Baroquem

Kindle on iPhone

Amazon has come out with a free iPhone/iPod touch Kindle application, letting users buy and read DRMed e-books and synchronize them with a Kindle. The company seems to be pushing it as something to use in addition to your Kindle, not a replacement:

But Amazon said that it sees its Kindle reader and devices like the iPhone as complementary, and that people will use their mobile phones to read books only for short periods, such as while waiting in grocery store lines.

“We think the iPhone can be a great companion device for customers who are caught without their Kindle,” said Ian Freed, Amazon’s vice president in charge of the Kindle.

Mr. Freed said people would still turn to stand-alone reading devices like the $359 Kindle when they want to read digital books for hours at a time. He also said that the experience of using the new iPhone application might persuade people to buy a Kindle, which has much longer battery life than the iPhone and a screen better suited for reading.

I wouldn’t be too sure of that. It seems to me that this gives iPhone users one more reason not to buy a Kindle: access to books and materials that were previously Kindle-only. Perhaps Freed is hoping for something akin to the much-debated iPod halo effect, which has been propelling Mac sales for the past few years now.

There are a couple of problems with that idea, though. For one, Apple’s halo effect worked because the bait and the hook were both hardware devices made by the same company. People liked the experience of using an iPod, so they thought that Apple’s other hardware-software packages might be similarly pleasurable. Using an Amazon application on an Apple device might backfire, leading people to … enjoy their iPhones more. Unless the hope is to drive people to the Kindle because the Amazon app is bad, which is certainly one (unintended) way of reading Mr. Freed’s comments.

The other problem is that the Amazon app on the iPhone necessarily offers a very different user experience to that of using the Kindle itself. (DISCLAIMER: I have used neither. I’m saying this based on what I’ve read and what I’m assuming based on the hardware differences.) The iPhone provides a touch screen, fluid animation, and bright, vivid color; the Kindle uses physical controls and slow e-ink in greyscale only. Are the Kindle’s larger screen, low power consumption, and sharper text (?) going to be enough to offset those drawbacks? I don’t know.

I’ve been surprised by the relative success of the Kindle so far. The second-generation device sounds like a considerable improvement over the original, but I still don’t want to buy one of my own. (I wouldn’t mind playing with one for a little while, though!) I was also recently surprised to find that reading books on the iPhone also works pretty well; and between the iPhone and real, physical books, I think I’m fairly well covered. I figure that most other people are, too — at least, for now.