iPhone and iPad owners who use Amazon's Kindle app for book reading may soon find sound and moving images on their digital pages.
Amazon has launched 13 books with audio and video. When viewed on Kindle hardware, these books will appear in the usual black and white, with no moving images or sound. But they'll gain new life on Apple's iOS devices.
For example, Bird Songs by Les Beletsky has audio clips that match with each bird's distinctive call, and Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum includes video tips. There doesn't seem to be any price increase involved, as all the books listed cost $10, typical for Amazon e-books.
While Amazon and Barnes & Noble do battle for e-reader supremacy, the iPad -- and to some extent the iPhone and iPod Touch -- has become fertile ground for a software battle between e-book sellers. Apple has its native iBooks app, but Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo also offer their own reader apps, each with individual book stores.
The choice is ostensibly good for consumers, but it also creates a dilemma: If someone's library is held entirely within iBooks or Barnes & Noble, it might be off-putting to suddenly have one or two books in Amazon just to take advantage of audio or video, or to get a book that isn't available in the other stores. Since you can't transfer books from one reader app to the other, users become either locked in or spread thin. Still, it's a clever move by Amazon to make its bookstore distinct with the addition of multimedia.
The presence of audio and video in Amazon's books has led to some speculation that the company's preparing a more advanced e-reader -- after all, Amazon did buy a company that makes multi-touch color screen technology. This may happen eventually, but Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos said in late May that the technology is still in the laboratory and "a long way out."
