Kindle Apps with Audio/Video: Hint of Things To Come?
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Amazon has spent the past few months bringing its Kindle apps to various mobile platforms (iPhone, Blackberry, ..). Kindle Apps have just gotten better with Amazon adding video/audio support to them. In essence, publishers can now embed video and audio in their books. That means Book 2.0 publishers have yet another channel to market their products through.
While Kindle fans are excited about this piece of news, Amazon could be giving us a hint about its future strategy for Kindle hardware. The company did drop Kindle 2’s price to $189, but Kindle 3 is not that far away. Considering that Amazon has already announced Kindle DK, partnered with a few gaming companies, and now has mobile apps that support somewhat interactive books, it is not tough to assume that Kindle 3 will be a major upgrade over Kindle 2 (hopefully with a color-screen).
It is not clear how Amazon intends to deal with video books on Kindle at this point. There were rumors a few months ago concerning Amazon’s plans to compete with the iPad. Could Amazon be thinking about introducing an LCD-screen Kindle?
At this point, there are not too many Kindle books with embedded audio and video. Adding support for these kinds of books is a good step forward though. Books are changing. Not surprisingly, Amazon wants to be a part of it all.
