I downloaded the Kindle reader for my iPod Touch earlier this week. I don’t anticipate that I’ll use it much, since I do have an actual Kindle, but I wanted to play around with it. Given the limitations of the iPhone form factor, the app works reasonably well. I suppose I could manage to read a book on it, but I’m not sure I’d want to.
I think that releasing this app right now was a good move on Amazon’s part. There do seem to be a lot of people who are comfortable reading on the iPhone. A good number of e-books have been released as iPhone apps, so apparently there’s a market. Amazon might as well pick up some sales this way, and maybe the app will eventually drive some Kindle 2 hardware sales, as people get used to buying and reading e-books, and decide to step up to a dedicated device.
I’m a little surprised that they don’t support reading newspapers and magazines via the iPhone app. Maybe it’s a rights issue. If I was going to read anything on the iPhone, it’d more likely be newspaper and magazine articles, rather than full-length books though.