Mac Guru

Amazon Ditches Apple’s 30% Cut With Kindle Cloud Reader

Amazon Ditches Apple’s 30% Cut With Kindle Cloud Reader

Amazon, not wanting to pay Apple’s 30% share of all of their Kindle sales on iOS devices, has now released a new web app called Kindle Cloud Reader. The new service allows users of Macs, PC’s and tablets to read (and purchase) Kindle books without the use of an app!

The service works well on Mobile Safari for the iPad (pictured below, click to expand), but currently really doesn’t work at all on the Apple iPhone or Apple iPod touch – perhaps Amazon should have nailed this detail before going public, or does nobody read on their iPhones and Apple iPod Touches?

Further, one particularly notable feature of Kindle Cloud Reader is that it can cache content on your device so you can view it later without having to be connected to the internet.

This is a great solution on Amazon’s part to work around Apple’s in-app-purchase requirements, requiring applications that offer purchases to pay Apple 30% of those purchases right off the top.