Kindle is, without a doubt, the highest profile e-reader platform running. With applications on iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Windows, and OS X as well as its own line of e-paper Kindle devices, Amazon had an estimated 90% share of the e-book sales market last year.
Today, Amazon announced that a Kindle app will be launched on the Android mobile operating system this summer.
Like the BlackBerry app, Android users will be able to purchase Amazon e-books inside the mobile app. That functionality is noticeably absent on the iPhone and iPad versions, where users must go to the browser to download new books.
If Amazon were to include that functionality on the iPhone and iPad apps, a 30% commission for in-app purchases would have to be paid to Apple, which is not exactly the most economically feasible solution for Amazon.
But what this means is that the bevy of Android tablets coming out this year will be able to offer the full Kindle experience where the iPad will not; and as we saw last month, some Android tablets are really suitable only as e-readers. Giving these devices unfettered access to the Kindle Store’s market-dominating 500,000+ e-books is a great boon to the platform.
It is worth noting, however, that this version will only be compatible with Android 1.6 and up, and that subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and blogs will not be supported when the app is released in the next few weeks.