Nokia opens e-books for WinPho mobiles
It's an Instapaper clone too
MWC 2012
Nokia has launched an e-book reader app for its Lumia smartphones.
It also plans to take on the likes of Flipboard and Instapaper by pulling down web content and social network updates and presenting them magazine-style on its handsets' screens.
Nokia Reading - which, for British readers, might suggest there's a Nokie Wokingham or Nokia Swindon in the works* - will go live in April to deliver what the Finnish phone giant called at "reading hub".
There will be the inevitable online bookshop filled with books from major publishers and the inevitable free, public domain material from the likes of Project Gutenberg.
Judging by one Nokia write-up, if you've used Amazon's Kindle app for iDevices and Android kit, you'll have a very good idea what Nokia Reading will deliver.
Unlike the Amazon app, or Apple's iBooks, say, Nokia Reading will sport "a personalised magazine page that updates content across the most popular categories, and adds web content from your chosen sites", a trick borrowed from a number of popular apps such as Instapaper.
There's no word yet on what formats Nokia Reading will support should you wish to use other online shops, or to copy over e-books already in your possession. ®
*Blame Nigel W for that one.
COMMENTS
So...
...this was what Nokia was working on when Google and Apple were creating effective and usable phone operating systems! With all the time and money they had I was expecting a cure for cancer or a perpetual motion machine, but I suppose an e-book reader is perfectly okay.
Re: Seems pretty pointless
It's to make their phones more "sticky". Basically they hope by getting people to buy content from a platform which is tied to Nokia / Windows devices that come the day you upgrade you will be far less inclined to buy another platform because you will lose your content.
Same thing is happening on Apple and even Google. All are trying to tie you into their clouds, their content, their services. Then they have you buy the short and curlies. It's completely anti-competitive of course.
If you can't read your own DRM free epubs on WP7 then what have they been playing at?
Seems pretty pointless
"if you've used Amazon's Kindle app for iDevices and Android kit, you'll have a very good idea what Nokia Reading will deliver."
You mean it's just the same as Kindle on WinMo :P So why would Nokia go to all the effort of making it's own book app, when Kindle is there, and is well, bloody brilliant as it is?! It's kind of blowing money on making an alternative wheel, but there's is oval.
