Amazon Announces Apps For The Kindle

That’s right folks, now the Kindle owners are the latest to get in on the third-party apps market. Amazon has just released a software development kit for the Kindle that they call KDK — Kindle Development Kit. With this, third-party developers will be able to make and sell their own apps for the Kindle. But what do you make for a device that has a screen that has no backlighting and really slow refresh rates?

Well, those are probably the reasons why Amazon is not using the term Apps. Nah uh, they prefer to call it Active Content. So how active will it be? Well, you can expect a lot of different RSS readers, out of which two or three will catch up. Companies would release their own apps, like they did on the iPhone. The interest would be slightly more restricted that the smartphone app stores mainly because of the niche status of the device.

This also opens the doors to Magazines and other periodicals to release their own subscription service. Amazon of course gets to keep a cut and that cut could be quite hefty. So there’s another deterrent to developers right there. But beyond all that lies a shadow, a shadow that pushed Amazon into doing this. This is the shadow of Apple looking over the budding e-Reader industry that has only just gotten started.

This has happened before in tech history — niche products have been replaced wholesale with a revolutionary product that has everything that the niche products don’t have. A lot of people thought that the ‘iPod for books’ idea was enough to create something that would recreate the magic Apple did. But it is not that easy, as companies like Amazon, Interead, etc. have found out.

Apple’s impending slate device is supposedly coming this Wednesday and with it is coming print content on the iTunes store — arguably the largest online electronic content store. With a great device and the perfect platform, Apple has everything that is required to beat the burgeoning e-Reader market. And I am sure that in their bid to overhaul the print industry, they will do exactly that.

So this is actually Amazon trying to preempt the Apple slate device in the week leading up to its launch. In fact, now is the last chance for small companies to do these things because once the Apple slate coverage starts, it will only be added to by the new iPhone announcement.

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