Official iPad app on Amazon

Amazon announced the launch of its official iPad app today. It's now available in Apple's App Store.

"Following the launch of the Amazon App for iPhone and iPod touch, we've used our customers' feedback to help us build a fun and intuitive shopping destination on the iPad," says Director of Amazon Mobile Sam Hall. "This application offers customers a unique, interactive experience that takes full advantage of the visual and tactile nature of the iPad."

Features

- Purchase using Amazon's 1-Click ordering and Amazon Prime
- Track packages or modify orders using the Your Account feature
- Receive personalized recommendations
- View editorial and customer reviews
- Browse Amazon's Bestsellers, Gold Box Deal of the Day and Lightning Deals
- Access Wish List and Universal Wish List
- Watch movie trailers and listen to song samples

There is no doubt that this will be one of the most popular apps on the iPad. Most people who purchase items online and own iPads are most likely going to download this one.

The app itself takes a lot from the iBookstore, including visual page swipes and book cover navigation view (of course, to be fair Apple did "borrow" a number of things from Wil Shipley). One cool eye-candy feature of the Kindle app is that the app's developers have played around a little with Kindle's silhouetted figure reading under a tree iconography. In cover-navigation view, the sky behind the silhouetted figure will change according to what time of day it is.

The ebook war is heating up and, though early on, it looks like Apple and Amazon are going to be the two major players. Given that Amazon last week threatened smaller publishers that it will stop selling their books if they make them available in the iBookstore, it might at first seem odd that Amazon is so readily embracing the iPad. But in an age where content is king, hardware sales take a back seat to continued content sales. Amazon supporting the iPad is like giving away the razors so people have to by the blades -- and indeed Amazon has begun giving away its own Kindle hardware to its Amazon Prime subscribers to secure Kindle book sales.