As ianferrel and ableal explained, the day Kindle software becomes the obvious way to read e-books on the Newton ][ (I love that name - too bad it won't be), Amazon wins.
Apple will do whatever it takes to prevent Amazon from controlling the ecosystem.
Re:Kindle Development Kit
by stcredzero on Thursday January 21, 2010 @05:16PM
(#1068500)
My point is that Apple doesn't have to "win" in this way.
Why does Apple care if Amazon "controls the ecosystem," when they can still sell high margin hardware? Does Apple have to control the Web because they publish Safari? Safari was a play to assure the continued viability of OS X. Apple doesn't necessarily want to "win". They want to make money. "Winning" isn't necessary in every case for that.
But then Apple would be ceding the future of electronic publishing of text to Amazon, and could never differentiate its hardware over the Kindle's, unless Amazon decided to support richer media in its files than the Kindle will actually display (not likely). That's not a plan that's consistent with Apple's strategy so far.
No need. Apple could just run the upcoming OS X version of Kindle (perhaps virtualized) on their tablet. Amazon could respond by detecting this and disabling their software, but I doubt they'd do it.