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Amazon has added to its collection of ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere' applications with options soon becoming available for owners of Android and Windows tablets.
New Android and Windows tablets launched this year will get their own Kindle apps letting users choose from over 775,000 Kindle e-books from Amazon's online book store.
Amazon said: "the new Kindle apps built for Android and Windows tablet computers will let customers ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere' on Kindle, Kindle 3G, Kindle DX, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, and Android-based devices."
Amazon has been busy over the past year rolling out new apps with its Kindle iPad app becoming a top ten best-seller for the tablet. It has also just announced a new lending feature as well as the news that its 3rd generation Kindle is the e-tailer's best-selling product ever.
Amazon's CEO has previously said the perceived threat to e-readers from tablets has been over-egged and Amazon's Kindle director, Dorothy Nicholls, said: "Many people are buying both a Kindle and an LCD tablet computer."
She said the forthcoming apps will be tailored to the new tablets and will feature Kindle's Whispersync technology so users can flick between devices without losing their place in the e-book they are reading.
In related news, Amazon's app store, which is due to launch later on in 2011, has been opened up to developers, TechCrunch reported.
Amazon has reportedly invited developers to submit their apps and the new store is predicted to shake up the way Android apps are distributed and bought and has been likened to a model more similar in character to Apple's App Store than Android's Market.
Just like when a developer submits an app to Apple, Amazon will reportedly have to approve an application and meet certain liberal and transparent guidelines before an app is available for public consumption.
It seems the big difference will be that Amazon, instead of developers will decide how much consumers will pay for an application and the developer will reportedly bag 70 percent of sales.
Another big change to the way people buy apps will be that Amazon will be allowed to heavily discount apps, possibly undercutting Apple's App Store or the price on Android Market. Apparently if this happens developers will still get 20 percent of the list price but it will be consumers that get a better deal.
