Adobe Hammers Away At Amazon

The guys at Adobe are made, and they want Amazon to know they are. We all know the reasons behind Amazon not supporting PDF at this time. Amazon wants to protect its customer experience by exerting more control on what goes on its device. But Adobe has been pushing to get on the Kindle and the iPhone for quite some time now. Apple doesn’t seem too interested to work with Adobe. Amazon doesn’t have any plans to do so. Where does that leave Adobe? Not where it wants to be.

Adobe is working with Amazon’s competitors to bring PDF on competing devices. Not only that, the new Adobe Reader Mobile 9 makes it easy for mobile users to read PDF content on their smart phones. Adobe is not going to get into the hardware business. We won’t see a physical Adobe PDF Reader. But Adobe is targeting all kinds of mobile devices to put pressure on Amazon. There are a lot of folks who are using their iPhone to read e-books. Sony Reader and other e-book readers have their following and Adobe can still reach out to those folks. Kindle is going to be a bit tricky. Adobe and Amazon are both controlling. Adobe wants to dominate the world. Amazon wants to protect its investment. I am not sure these guys are ready to meet half way to get something done.

I am not sure Kindle needs PDF to grow. Amazon Kindle store is already the place to get content for Kindle. Jeff Bezoz’s vision (digitizing all books in the world) is very ambitious and the progress the company has made so far is promising. Having PDF and other formats can make things a bit easier for Kindle users but is not a deal breaker. Will Amazon and Adobe work together on Kindle 3.0 or Kindle 4.0? Nobody knows. But the pressure is more on Adobe.

Your thoughts: would you like to see support for PDF on Kindle? Is the lack of PDF support a deal breaker?