Apple may have swanned in with iBooks for the iPhone on the iOS 4 update last week, but Amazon’s Kindle app is busy propagating across other mobile operating systems.
The Kindle eReader application began with the Kindle device itself but then became available as a downloadable app for both RIM’s BlackBerry devices and the iPhone, making it possible to download Kindle eBooks and sync with ones stored on the Kindle, your Mac or PC.
The growing popularity of Google’s Android mobile OS for both smartphones and netbooks is making it a potentially lucrative market for eBooks and Amazon has grasped this with the release of the Kindle for Android app yesterday.
The Android Kindle app is free to download from Android Market and has several features, including auto sync with your last page read and annotations between devices with Whispersync, adjustable text size, the ability to add bookmarks and view annotations you created on your Kindle device or PC.
There is also the option to read eBooks in portrait or landscape mode and tapping on either side of the screen turns pages.
The Kindle Store has also been given the Android treatment and is optimised for viewing and browsing on this device with a section for looking through New York Times best-sellers and new releases but unfortunately, as with the iPhone Kindle app, you cannot get Kindle newspapers, magazines or blogs through the mobile app version.
