No Kindle SDK On The Horizon?

Kindle has been around for a while now. We have already had 2 generations of Amazon Kindles in the past couple of years, and the device has come a long way in the process. At the same time, when you see what a certain other company has done with its own gadgets, it’s hard not to be jealous. Apple is one of the most innovative companies in the world, but you don’t have to be a genius to realize that. All you have to do is take a look at what it has done with its iPod and iPhone product lines. A while ago, Apple realized that it’s much better to focus on the software side of things to have success in the long run. To its credit, Amazon has also started to focus a bit on software (e.g. Kindle app for iPhone). But we still haven’t seen any indications that Amazon is planning to follow in Apple’s footsteps to develop a SDK of its own.

A Kindle SDK would go a long way towards making Kindle a top gadget for a very long time to come. Unfortunately, the current Kindle code is not anything that would excite programmers. There have been many Kindle hacks and small little 3rd party extensions in the past, but Amazon has not made it easy for programmers to develop their own enhancements for Kindle. It’s understandable that Amazon wants some degree of control over its gadget, but Kindle will never be truly great without a SDK. Who knows what kind of apps people will come up with once they have access to some sort of software development kit.

Let’s hope Amazon does take the chance and trust its community to take its device to the next level. Apple did.

Your take: what enhancement would you develop for Kindle if you had access to an iPhone-like SDK?