Apple angered many when it instituted a hefty fee for purchases made within apps on its devices. Especially in the highly price competitive e-book industry, where the most popular books are already often sold at a loss even before paying Apple’s fee.
On the other hand, the iPad still commands more than half the U.S. tablet market and more and more people are doing their reading on tablets. What to do? For Amazon, the solution is the new Kindle Cloud Reader which lets users read books directly within their browsers. That is, if those browsers are either Google Chrome or Apple Safari, for instance on an iPad. Since the reading takes place on the Web and not within a native app no fee applies. But will users take to it?
Read more at Los Angeles Times.
