Amazon to make Kindle mobile

Amazon has confirmed that books currently available for its Kindle e-reader will soon be accessible on mobile phones.

The company – which is also expected to launch a redesigned Kindle later this month – said the gadget’s books will soon be available on a variety of handsets.

It hasn’t specified which phones will be able to access the Kindle book collection, which currently rests at about 230,000 titles.

Drew Herdener, a spokesman for Amazon, told the New York Times that it’s now working on making the dream of Kindle titles on mobiles a reality.

Google’s already announced plans to put books onto mobiles, but while the Kindle’s titles are newly released titles and bestsellers, the search engine giant’s are mainly works now in the public domain.

How popular books on mobiles will prove with bookworms remains to be seen. It’s worth remembering that much of Kindle’s appeal – and of Sony’s rival Reader range - lies in the easy-to-read e-ink display technology, which isn’t available for mainstream mobile phones yet.

That said, Stanza, an e-book reader, has been a hugely popular iPhone download.

Nintendo’s already bucked the e-ink trend and launched a catalogue of famous novels for its DS handheld console. ®