For over two years, Amazon has been offering a wide selection of free Kindle reading apps that enable customers to “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” as Amazon likes to say. The platforms include Kindles, iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, PCs, Macs, Android phones and tablets, and BlackBerrys.
Well today they have change the game by using the power of HTML5. The Kindle Cloud Reader leverages HTML5 to let you read Kindle books instantly using only their web browser – online or offline – with no downloading or installation required. As with all Kindle apps, Kindle Cloud Reader automatically synchronizes your Kindle library, as well as your last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights for all of your Kindle books, no matter how you choose to read them. Kindle Cloud Reader with its integrated touch optimized Kindle Store is available starting today for Safari on iPad, Safari on desktop and Chrome at www.amazon.com/cloudreader.
Features of Kindle Cloud Reader
- 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
End Run Around Apple’s App Store Rules – You Can Shop for Books Again on your iPad
The Cloud Reader brings book shopping back to iPad owners and has a new, touch-optimized store instead of simply pushing readers to the regular web page.
Amazon along with other competitors had to remove its web store link from its native iPad app in late July after Apple began enforcing its policy on in-app content against major developers. Apple has argued that it would only be “fair” for purchases in the apps themselves to go through iTunes, but the move has made certain store business models unfeasible. Amazon would have lost money on most books sales, due to Apple’s 30 percent cut on iTunes sales.
Coming to Other 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.
