Bank Holiday’s being what they are, I was a little slow in seeing this, but it is a pretty interesting move by Amazon.
Firstly the fact that they are pushing newspaper and periodical content to the apps suggests to me that their strategy of becoming less and less about the Kindle and more and more about everywhere is working, why else would they need to do this or bother?
Secondly it shows that haring, something B&N took a risk on and haven’t really had enormous success with yet, might just become a much bigger part of the ebook market in the next few years.
First, we are making Kindle newspapers and magazines readable on our free Kindle apps, so you can always read Kindle periodicals even if you don’t have your Kindle with you or don’t yet own a Kindle. In the coming weeks, many newspapers and magazines will be available on our Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and then we’ll be adding this functionality to Kindle for Android and our other apps down the road. Our vision is Buy Once, Read Everywhere, and we’re excited to make this possible for Kindle periodicals in the same way that it works now for Kindle books. More details when we launch this in the coming weeks.
Second, later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending.
Eoin Purcell's Blog 