Amazon Sticks It to Apple, Makes Amazon MP3 Store Available on iPhone and iPod touch
Apple perfected a vertical market when it developed the iPhone, iOS, and the App Store, effectively walling off the garden, as it were. In fact, the only real loophole for evading the standards and practices of the App Store was the Safari Web browser, which of course flung open the doors to the Internet with a single tap.
Amazon has now taken that loophole and exploited it in a major way by making its entire 22 million-song MP3 library available for purchase on iOS devices. The Amazon MP3 Store's mobile website for the aforementioned iOS devices has been optimized using HTML5, thus enabling purchases directly from Amazon with the availability of immediate playback using the Amazon Cloud Player app.
The Cloud Player app has been hanging around the App Store for a while, but the kicker was that it was just a player; sure, you could stream your whole library, but purchasing music from Amazon wasn’t as simple. Now it is, and with this subtle change, Amazon is offering additional competition for iTunes right in Apple’s backyard. Nobody in Cupertino can be particularly pleased about this.
Amazon has now taken that loophole and exploited it in a major way by making its entire 22 million-song MP3 library available for purchase on iOS devices. The Amazon MP3 Store's mobile website for the aforementioned iOS devices has been optimized using HTML5, thus enabling purchases directly from Amazon with the availability of immediate playback using the Amazon Cloud Player app.
The Cloud Player app has been hanging around the App Store for a while, but the kicker was that it was just a player; sure, you could stream your whole library, but purchasing music from Amazon wasn’t as simple. Now it is, and with this subtle change, Amazon is offering additional competition for iTunes right in Apple’s backyard. Nobody in Cupertino can be particularly pleased about this.
