• D: All Things Digital , Wednesday, March 4, 2009 12:15 PM

Just last month, Amazon said it planned to make its Kindle e-book titles available on other devices. Today, the Web retailing giant announced a partnership with Apple that allows Kindle owners to read their e-books on their iPhone or iPod Touch. The Kindle app is free, too, although it doesn't let you buy e-books from Amazon directly (like Apple's iTunes does). To do that, you have to use your Web browser to go to Amazon to buy Kindle titles. The app does allow you to sync the titles between your iPhone (or iTouch) and your Kindle.

As MediaMemo writer Peter Kafka notes, Amazon and Apple are technically competitors, particularly for music and video sales. That said, they are not in the e-book market, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs has shown little interest. Kafka says Amazon clearly sees the Kindle as a superior device for reading e-books than the iPhone, otherwise they would not do this partnership. Either that, or Amazon realizes that the Kindle targets an older user base than the iPhone, whose users might be just as comfortable reading books on their phone as on an (expensive) e-book reader.

As for the bigger picture for both companies, Kafka says Apple is still primarily a hardware maker that uses content to make its gadgets more attractive, while "Amazon is basically the inverse": a content seller that's using hardware to sell even more content. "So the detente here makes plenty of sense," he says.

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