It’s official: Kindle is coming an Android mobile device near you a short time this summer. Kindle is already available on the iPhone, iPad, and BlackBerry, but Android () will join the mobile lineup in the next few months. The free app comes with all of the traits you’d expect in a Kindle app: access to Amazon’s half a million e-books, automatic sync of bookmarks, notes, and highlights, and the ability to read books in portrait or landscape mode. While Kindle for Android seems very akin to its iPhone and iPad counterparts, it does come with an added trait: the aptitude to buy books through the app itself. iPhone and iPad users presently have to buy Kindle books via the Safari () mobile web browser because Amazon doesn’t want to give up 30% of its book sales to its new e-book rival. There still aren’t a lot of details about Kindle for Android, but Amazon has generated a landing page where Android users can sign up for updates on the app. Oh, and for those with older Android mobile phones, there’s good news: Kindle for Android works on cell phones running Android 1.6 or better. With Apple and other book retailers challenging Amazon’s supremacy of the e-book market, the world’s biggest online retailer is responding by scattering its virtual library onto as many platforms as possible. It’s all part of a chess game between Apple and Amazon for control the e-book market.
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