Amazon Kindle App Now Available on BlackBerry

As the menacing, iPad-shaped shadow looms on the horizon, Amazon's Kindle has apparently braced itself for the oncoming storm by expanding its smartphone wingspan. After having already introduced Kindle e-reader apps for the iPod Touch and iPhone, Amazon has now expanded the software to the BlackBerry, as well. According to Amazon, the new app will be compatible with BlackBerry's Bold 9000 and 9700, Curve 8520 and 8900, Storm 9530 and 9550, and Tour 9630 models. As CNET reports, BlackBerry users will now be able to leaf through Amazon's library, preview books before purchasing, and synchronize their books, notes, and bookmarks with their real Kindle or other Kindle desktop software. Whereas owners of the iPhone and iPod touch Kindle apps can use those devices to annotate books, it doesn't appear that the BlackBerry version will offer similar capabilities. Amazon also announced that it'll soon be expanding its software to Macs and (gasp!) iPads, in addition to its own existing Windows software.

Amazon's Vice President of Kindle work Ian Freed told CNET, "Since the launch of our popular Kindle for iPhone app last year, customers have been asking us to bring a similar experience to the BlackBerry, and we are thrilled to make it available today." We certainly take his claim of consumer demand at face value, although we don't fully understand it. We thought the Kindle reading experience was supposed to be completely different from reading books on a computer screen. And isn't an e-reader supposed to be portable enough already? Isn't there some practical limit to how much we can shrink the entire canon of digital literature? And how will we know when we've reached it? But if iPhone users dig atomized reading, and BlackBerry toters want it, too, then we probably haven't. Besides, what do we know? We still buy paperbacks. [From: CNET, via: Lifehacker]

Tags: amazon, amazon kindle, AmazonKindle, blackberry, blackberry app world, BlackberryAppWorld, books, e-book, ereaders, top