Amazon Kindle App for iPhone and iPod touch released

Amazon released a free application for the iPhone and iPod touch that allows users to access to hundreds of thousands of eBook from Amazon’s Kindle store on Apple’s Popular mobile devices.

The Amazon Kindle for iPhone app is FREE (iTunes Link), but it looks like books need to be purchased from Amazon directly via PC or Mac and transferred over, or from the iPhone via Mobile Safari. Most e-books should run $9.99. Like with the Kindle device itself, you can sample first chapters for free, adjust text size and bookmark. You can’t annotate but you can view Kindle annotations.

This comes just a few days after Amazon’s Kindle 2 eBook reader arrived in user’s hands, but according to ian Freed, an Amazon vice president, Amazon does not expect that this app will cannibalize kindle sales as users will probably only use their phones to read for short periods.

Freed also argues that the kindle has nothing to fear from the iPhone because of its superior screen and battery life.