Kindle for iPhone app now available in over sixty countries

10:16 am, December 14th, 2009, John Brownlee

kindle_vs_iphone

Although e-readers like the Amazon Kindle and the new (and maligned) Barnes & Noble Nook are certainly tempting additions to a gadget fetishist’s armoire of doodads, I’ve never had much interest in owning one.

My ambivalence isn’t simply due to the fact that I think books conveyed as mere digital information is less sensual and vibrant than books as a medium: there is that, but I have still enjoyed reading e-books (thanks to Gutenberg.org) for most of the last decade. It’s mostly because I only enjoy reading e-books in certain circumstances: for example, when waiting for a subway, or in bed with the lights off. The e-ink panels of the Kindle and the Nook don’t work in the dark, which means my fleeting interest in e-books can only be satisfied with backlit devices. A few years ago, that was through my Pocket PC and the fantastic e-book program, uBook ; these days, it’s through my iPhone and the Stanza e-reader app.

Stanza is fantastic, of course, but with the release of the Kindle for iPhone app earlier this year, I’d been interested in supplementing my iPhone e-reading with Kindle books for awhile, only to be stymied by the fact that Amazon’s app was for US audiences only. But today, that’s changed: Apple has finally introduced its Kindle for iPhone App to international users.

It’s the same app as before, allowing you to purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books through the Kindle Store while syncing your notes and bookmarks across devices… the only difference is it now works on iPhones and iPod Touches in over sixty different countries.

I tend to doubt Kindle for iPhone will replace Stanza as my default e-reader on the iPhone — it’s hard to beat Stanza’s vast library of free classics — but I’m at least looking forward to finally being able to supplement it.

Posted by John Brownlee in News, Software, iPhone | Comment on this article

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About the author

John Brownlee has written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Berlin with a charming girlfriend against whom he is currently enjoying a thirteen game cribbage winning streak, and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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4 comments

Thanks for the tip I’ve been waiting for this app to be available on the Canadian store for weeks.

One question I have though, if I was to download a book through he app onto my touch can you later transfer your purchase onto a pc or mac?

porkchop1234, on December 14th, 2009 at 10:03 pm

Cool, but the usual problem for me is teh books I want arn’t in the Asia Pacific store.

John, on December 14th, 2009 at 10:30 pm

I’m confused. you don’t like e-ink because it doesn’t work in the dark… so you turn on a light. and then you can use your e-ink kindle, just like a normal book.

Willie, on December 15th, 2009 at 10:48 pm

ooohhhh i get it you like the lights off. got it. its the opposite of what i like, but “different strokes for different folks”
god i feel so lame for using that phrase

Willie, on December 15th, 2009 at 10:50 pm