What's Behind Amazon's Kindle App Tweak?

Today Amazon announced that it's improving the code behind its Kindle app for iOS and Android to allow support for graphic novels and children's illustrated comics. The iOS app is also being polished to alow better searches of your library of downloaded titles and to better fit the iPad's screen. The kid's books get a dynamic Kindle Text Pop-Up so that words are easier to read, and comics get a special panel view.The timing is almost assuredly meant to snatch a bit of limelight in the moments after Apple revealed its powerful new iOS 6 software, destined to challenge every other tablet maker's efforts--including Amazon's (particularly if the long-rumored iPad mini does actually appear on sale later this year). Apple also operates in the ebooks space, and has made a big play for more interactive, graphical content in the ebooks it publishes in its own electronic bookstore, iBooks.While the cheap, relatively low-tech Fire is perhaps the hottest tablet to rival Apple's dominance of the market with the iPad, Amazon is rumored to be planning a more powerful 10-inch unit later in the year. That would be a direct competitor for the iPad, which has a 9.7-inch display, and possibly more suited to consuming movies and rich-media books and magazines served up from Amazon's own digital content stable (a direct rival to iTunes). Logic would suggest that Amazon may try a similar trick to the one it tried with the Fire, launching it at a significantly lower price than the iPad's $499... Continue reading at 'Fast Company'

[ Fast Company | 2012-06-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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