With April 3rd approaching, vendors and users are brewing with excitement for the Apple iPad release. Whether or not Amazon is happy with the creation of the competing Kindle, it is clear that Amazon is looking at the iPad as a business opportunity. Instead of taking a defensive point of view, Amazon has created an iPad Kindle app to leverage this channel of business. This app will allow users to buy books from the Kindle library. While Amazon could have had an ego-war with Apple, it is clear that Amazon has a larger vision ahead of Apple.
Amazon will essentially be making profit from their competitor and will have traffic being driven to their site because of Apple. With the projections of the iPad to grow at least to half a million sales [via 9to5mac], Amazon will surely profit. So the real question is, is Amazon truly a friend of Apple, or is Amazon keeping its enemies closer?
Steve Jobs actually has not said anything yet, but with the recent Amazon purchase of Touchco, a smaller company that manufactures cheap multitouch displays, his cockiness may not last as long. Granted that the Kindle won’t have the ability like the iPad to have an iBook library or iTunes, or the ability for FPS games, Amazon is still trying to get into the game. The Touchco screen is pressue sensitive which means that this screen “can detect an infinite number of simultaneous touches. Plus, it’s totally transparent (old school resistive touchscreen layers dim brightness and dull colors) and designed to work with full color LCD screens” [via Gizmodo]. Look at how the Touchco screen works:
With this new technology emerging, Steve Jobs better watch his back. Even with his secret trip to New York to meet with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times regarding potentially bringing content from those resources to the iPad, the competition continues to grow [via MacRumors]. So in conclusion, I hope that Jobs enjoyed his dinner with the 50 New York Time’s execs and his specially ordered mango lassi and penne pasta off the menu, because who knows, maybe Jeff Bezos was ordering his strawberry daiquiry at the table behind him.
