Amazon has released Kindle - an iPhone app that, well, allows users to read Kindle-formatted e-books, magazines, and newspapers. The application is easy enough to use, and the iPhone client keeps bookmarks and reading locations synced between the iPhone and any Kindle devices synced with the Amazon account, but purchases have to be made via a desktop browser, Mobile Safari, or an actual Kindle device
The obvious question here is why. Less than a month after Amazon announced the 2nd generation of their Kindle device, they have opened their platform to include the iPhone (and other smart phones will probably follow). I think the answer is simple enough - Amazon’s money isn’t in the Kindle reader, but in the content they have for sale. And with a whole lot more iPhones than Kindles out there, that content is about to be seen by many, many more consumers.