Will Amazon Make An App Store For the Kindle?

Amazon Apps?

Companies like Facebook or Goodreads could add social features to the Kindle; game developers like Zynga could create nongraphics-intensive games like poker or chess for the device. There could also be educational games, or programs that take advantage of that rarely used keyboard and Kindle’s “experimental” Web browser.

Amazon might also interest businesses in developing their own Kindle apps — sales management tools or health records software — and in that way compete head to head with the upcoming business-focused Plastic Logic reader.

If Amazon opened up, “all of a sudden you’ve gone from a device that is great for reading books and maybe newspapers and magazines to something that has a real utility for business people and also for consumers,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research, which recently began surveying consumers about what other types of content they would like to see on e-readers.

Given the success of the App Store for the iPhone, it's hard to believe this business model will not quickly start showing up on other platforms, particularly on portable devices like eBook readers. Amazon might not be the first eReader to offer this, but I expect it will soon come.