The writing was probably on the wall for Amazon when Apple changed their iOS rules to incorporate subscription based applications. There was a lot of hubbub about what applications could remain on the App Store based on the new policies, and which would be pulled. A lot of people assumed that Amazon would be one of the major players, along with Netflix and a couple others, who would have to either comply with the new rules, or take their applications off of Apple’s App Store.
Turns out neither really happened, as Apple relaxed the rules a little, and Amazon was able to remain in the worlds largest App Store.
In the end Apple may have let them stay, but it’s pretty evident that Amazon thought twice about that promise. Today it’s being reported that Amazon has released a web-based Kindle reader that not only lets you purchases ebooks from Amazon, but also lets you read your books just like a native application. Actually, Amazon has even gone so far as to point out that the Kindle Cloud Reader is ‘Optimized for the iPad.’
Amazon clearly wasn’t about to let Apple do the same to them as they did to Kobo in recent weeks.
It’s interesting that these major companies are turning to HTML 5 based web applications instead of native applications. Back when the original iPhone shipped Apple didn’t plan on giving anyone access to native applications; instead, Apple encouraged everyone to create web apps. In that regard Apple’s iOS was probably the first Google Chrome OS. But, it didn’t last, and Apple caved to the demand for native web applications.
It seems like we’ve gone full circle. It doesn’t hurt that the Amazon Cloud Reader already looks like a better offering than the native iPad application.
Source: TechCrunch
