Amazon just made e-book reading a little more egalitarian, with the
introduction of Kindle for Windows Phone 7. The first major e-book app
for Microsofts new mobile OS, it enables owners of Windows Phone 7
smartphones to take advantage of Amazons Buy Once, Read Everywhere
Kindle applications.
"With Kindle books you never have to worry about what to
do if you change devices or platforms,” Dorothy Nicholls, director of
Amazon Kindle, said in a Jan. 5 statement. “Our free 'Buy Once, Read
Everywhere' apps make it easy for you to read your books on any device
you choose your Kindle, Kindle 3G, Kindle DX, iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac,
BlackBerry, Android-based device, and now your Windows Phone 7-based
device."
The offering includes features never before built into a
Kindle app, according to Amazon. These include the ability to
personalize recommendations integrated into Kindle app home screen, and
the ability to send a book recommendation to a friend from within the
app.
Like all Kindle apps, it offers access to more than
775,000 books and includes Whispersync technology, which automatically
syncs a users bookmark across all of a users compatible devices. A
Worry-Free Archive automatically downloads Kindle purchases on Amazon,
so ones library is backed up and can be re-downloaded anytime. And
reading can be done in landscape or portrait mode, in an choice of five
font sizes and three background color options.
With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft hoped to again become a
serious contender in the mobile market, capable of competing against
heavyweights Apple and Google. At an October event in New York,
Microsoft first introduced the OS on a handful of new smartphones the
HTC Surround, Samsung Focus and LG Quantum, headed for the AT&T
network, and the HTC HD7
and Dell Venue Pro for T-Mobile. In early 2011, Microsoft said at the
time, Verizon would also receive devices running the platform.
To read a review and view images of the HTC HD7, click here.
While Amazon, with its Kindle, also finds itself
competing with Apple, its e-reader is enjoying enormous success. This
past holiday season, Amazon announced in a statement, its
third-generation Kindle became its bestselling product of all time, outselling even the wildly popular seventh book in the Harry Potter series.
While the naysayers expect the Kindle wont repeat this
success in 2011, research firm Gartner is expecting e-readers to grow
by 68 percent in 2011, to more than 11 million units. And Amazon, not
looking for a scuffle, is striking a tone that suggests theres room
enough in the mobile market for the Kindle as well as the ever-growing
number of tablets. So long as the e-reading is left to Amazon.
"Customers report using their LCD tablets for games,
movies, and Web browsing and their Kindles for reading sessions, Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos said in a Dec. 27 statement, adding that, at $139,
people dont have to choose.
The free Kindle for Windows Phone 7 app is now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace.
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