Google appears to be dominating the iOS experience, not only with its Google Maps for iOS application but also with its Gmail app. On Monday, Google updated its mobile web application with a design very similar to its native iOS application. The company did something similar with their Google Maps app in the past.

Since launching the rebooted Gmail app for iPhone and iPad in December (http://goo.gl/2m7pd), we’ve heard from many of you that you like the redesigned UI, along with new features such as improved search and integration with Google Calendar. Today we’re rolling out a similar refreshed look to the Gmail mobile web app as well as Gmail Offline (http://goo.gl/0f1ae) that includes many of these same changes. Try it out at gmail.com in the browser of your Android, iOS, Blackberry or Kindle Fire device

The new update brings several features over from the Gmail app, which is available for free on the App Store, including improved integration with Google Calendar which a lot of users requested. The mobile web app now also uses the same UI as the native app, providing a level of familiarity and ease of use. With the web apps for both Google Maps and Gmail also available on the App Store, the company is offering iOS users an alternative for all of their cloud services.

{Via MacRumors}

Apple’s special iPad mini keynote event scheduled for today is expected to unveil all-new smaller iPad. The new “iPad mini” is rumoured to feature a 7.85 inch screen with 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi), the same as iPad 2.

The company’s move to introduce a smaller version of the iPad will help iOS penetrate the ebook reader market and compete with the Kindle devices. Apple is widely expected to announce iBooks 3.0 and the announcement of iPad mini could be closely tied to Apple’s education initiatives. The iPad mini will also feature front and rear facing camera, lighting connector and could come in different colors.

According to recent reports, the entry level model of iPad mini is expected to be priced at $329. The new device could prove to be ideal for schools and those who want a tablet put prefer a smaller screen.

Steve Jobs was opposed to the idea of a smaller screen tablet however many believe that it was Eddy Cue who saw the potential of a smaller screen tablet that could help push iOS deeper in education market.

Unlike iPhone 5 media event, Apple will be live streaming the video of the iPad mini keynote event on Apple.com and via Apple TV, the event will kick off at 10 am PDT.

With Apple Inc. (AAPL) “iPad Mini” media event scheduled for October 23rd, reports about pricing for the new device are beginning to appear online. Over the weekend, 9to5Mac reported that the iPad Mini would be priced at around $329 for an entry level WiFi only model. That is a $170 difference from the full sized WiFi only model. According to the report, there will also likely be two higher capacity models, which will be priced at $429 and $529 respectively.

As with the full sized iPad, a $130 premium will also be applied for Cellular models of the iPad Mini, boosting the prices to $459/$559/$659. Apple is widely expected to unveil the smaller 7.85 inch version of the iPad at the event, which is also expected to arrive with the new Lightning connector, alongside a tweaked full sized iPad, a 13 inch Retina MacBook Pro, and perhaps even updated models of the iMac and Mac Mini.

With the new iPad Mini set at a lower price, Apple will be able to compete with leading ebook readers such as the Kindle from Amazon. Apple already carries a wide variety of books and publishers through its iBooks service and pairing it with a smaller and slimmer iPad would be optimal for customers looking to read books on their iOS device.

{Via MacRumors}

Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire late last year, as a response to Apple’s dominance of the tablet computer market. On Thursday, the Seattle, Washington based company moved to introduce the new Kindle Fire HD LTE for the same $499 the iPad sells for.

A 32GB Kindle Fire HD LTE is available for the same price of a 16GB WiFi only iPad. However, the company took it one step further and tacked on a $50/year data plan, far less than Apple’s data plans for the WiFi+LTE iPads. All of Apple’s cellular iPads all carry a $130 premium charge for the 3G and 4G LTE technology built inside.

This may give the iPad some competition, particularly with Amazon’s wise choice to introduce the new device before the holiday season. Amazon also introduced an 8.9 inch WiFi only Kindle Fire HD for $299, a 7-inch Kindle Fire HD for $199 and dropped the price of the current Kindle Fire to $159. Each Kindle Fire HD LTE comes with a data cap of 250MB of data for $50/year, 20GB of cloud storage and a $10 credit to the Amazon app store.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made it a point to compare the Kindle Fire HD price points as well as the data plans to Apple’s iPad, noting that the average iPad owner with a data plan would pay over $959 in their first year of ownership. Amazon’s Kindle FIre HD LTE has the potential to make a rift in the tablet market, and is scheduled to arrive right before Thanksgiving and Christmas, on November 20.

{Via AppleInsider}

Early Wednesday, Amazon released an iPad app for its Instant Video service, Amazon Prime Instant Video. The service allows subscribers to rent and buy movies and television shows for offline viewing and competes with other major streaming giants such as Netflix. Amazon’s streaming also gives users the option to stream Prime Instant Video titles when connected to the internet.

Currently, other services such as Netflix only allow users to stream on the internet and do not provide an offline option. Now, these services will be available on the iPad, allowing Amazon to not only keep many of the customers they have but lure in new customers with the offerings on Apple’s popular tablet. With content on Amazon’s Prime Instant Video now available on iPad, users can stop streaming on one device, and resume on numerous others such as TV’s, a Mac or PC, and Amazon’s own Kindle Fire.

With Amazon Instant Video, you can:

– Stream thousands of titles available from Prime Instant Video at no additional cost with a Prime membership, or watch over 120,000 videos available from the Amazon Instant Video store
– Download purchased and rented videos from Your Video Library
– Shop over 120,000 videos available from the Amazon Instant Video store by visiting Amazon
– Add videos to your Watchlist from a PC, Mac, or Kindle Fire for later viewing on your iPad
– Subscribe to a TV Season Pass by visiting Amazon and episodes will automatically be available on your iPad the day after they air
– Start watching on your iPad, and resume watching right where you left off on a Kindle Fire, PS3, PC, Mac, or hundreds of models of connected TVs and Blu-ray players with Amazon Whispersync.

With this new service, it seems that Amazon is trying to get a leg up on Netflix and build a similar service but is using its Kindle Fire device to grab market share. Amazon Prime is available for $79 a year and also offers its customers free two day shipping and discounted overnight shipping.

Overall, this comes out to be a much cheaper and more convenient option when considering Netflix’s $7 a month charge which adds up to be more money and does not offer discounts on other products.

Amazon Instant Video is currently free {Direct Link} in the App Store and requires a subscription for log in.

{via MacRumors}

On Wednesday, Amazon announced its own gaming service for game developers called GameCircle. By creating this new experience, Amazon appears to be competing directly with Apple Inc. (AAPL) Game Center, putting scores, competition and social gaming into one service and offering it to developers and users alike.

On the Amazon Mobile App Distribution blog, the company describes what GameCircle is all about, calling it a “new set of services designed to make it easier for you to create more engaging gaming experiences and grow your business on Kindle Fire”.

GameCircle will make achievements, leaderboards and sync APIs accessible, simple and quick for you to integrate, and will give gamers a more seamless and entertaining in-game experience.

Although it focuses mainly on developers creating an ecosystem for their apps, the end user features are very similar to Game Center, Apple’s own online multiplayer social gaming network. It allows users to “ track all earned trophies, treasures, badges, awards, and more without leaving the gaming experience”.

Other features include giving users the ability to invite friends, start multiplayer games, track achievements, and compare scores on a leaderboard. With GameCircle, Amazon’s Kindle Fire enters the social gaming market that other companies such as Apple and Google are currently dominating. GameCircle will allow Amazon to offer tailored services to its Kindle Users and with the new SDK can also offer users apps made specifically for their device.

With GameCircle, Amazon is preparing to get a leg up on the competition and make the Kindle Fire one of the more sought after devices in the market. Amazon’s Kindle Fire 2 is rumored to be unveiled next summer, and will likely take advantage of GameCircle and the company’s numerous other services.

Apple’s Game Center Video

Amazon GameCircle Video

{Via 9to5Mac}

Apple’s rumored 7 inch iPad has been trending on the web since late last year, and now details about the device are beginning to emerge. Japanese site Macotakara reported late last week that Apple is slowly beginning to ramp up production of the 7.85” iPad mini at its Foxconn location in Brazil. The source also mentions that the tablet will, in fact be called the iPad Mini and that production tests on new cutting machines have already been done in China.

Source said that, production phase of this tablet will be started since September, and this tablet should be shipped until holiday season, but announcement will not be so soon.

The smaller version of the tablet has been reported to have 3G capabilities, but will likely be set up similar to the current iPad, with both WiFi and 3G versions available. Other details about the device remain unclear, and may appear as the announcement date gets closer. The iPad Mini would be competing with other smaller tablets on the market such as the Kindle Fire and Google Nexus 7.

The iPad Mini is expected to be thinner than the Kindle Fire, and will likely adopt an almost identical, albeit smaller design. According to Bloomberg, Apple is expected to release the iPad Mini later this year, during the same October timeframe as the next gen iPhone 5 and the public release of iOS 6.

{via MacRumors}

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) have been competing in the ereader and tablet market for over a year now, since the iPad was introduced. On Friday, a report from Bloomberg mentioned that Amazon is now looking to introduce its own smartphone to take on the iPhone and some of the leading Android devices in the market.

A smartphone would give Amazon a wider range of low-priced hardware devices that bolster its strategy of making money from digital books, songs and movies. It would help Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos — who made a foray into tablets with the Kindle Fire — carve out a slice of the market for advanced wireless handsets.

Amazon has one of the most popular ereaders out on the market, the Kindle and is also leading the industry with some of its other products, including its cloud services and tablet computer, the Kindle Fire. The report mentions that Amazon is set to acquire a portfolio of patents that would allow the company to take steps in competing directly with some of the top competitors.

The rumored smartphone would likely borrow certain aspects of the Kindle Fire, including features such as purchasing books, magazines, and newspapers from Amazon’s store as well as using Amazon’s Cloud Drive as external storage. Amazon currently operates services that control a considerable portion of the digital content available online. By introducing a smartphone alongside its tablet and pairing with its online content, Amazon could very well present the iPhone with a serious competitor in the smartphone market.

{Via MacRumors}

On Thursday, Apple held a special education event in New York City and introduced a number of software products, including the newest version of iBooks, iBooks 2, bringing textbooks to the iPad from large publishers including Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton-Mifflin.

Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. All you need is an idea and a Mac. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own text and images with drag-and-drop ease. Use Multi-Touch widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects, and more. Preview your book on your iPad at any time. Then submit your finished work to the iBookstore with a few simple steps. And before you know it, you’re a published author.

Apple also released an iBooks Author application, which allows users to create their own textbooks for the iPad 2. Since then, Apple has posted the video of the event to its site, alongside all other past events.

The Cupertino company also posted the Podcast for the event in both HD and standard formats. Apple is continuously increasing support for iBooks and is attempting to move into the e-reading market to compete with other popular reading devices such as the Nook and Kindle.

Amazon unveiled its iPad competitor called Kindle Fire today at an event held earlier in the afternoon. The tablet features a 7 inch IPS display, dual-core processor, 14.6 ounces as well as a hub for integrating Amazon Kindle, Prime, Instant Video, MP3, Appstore, and Web Services.

Amazon had been rumored to be working on an iPad killer since the last few months, pointing to a device very similar in terms of offerings to the iPad.

All content purchased and used on the Kindle Fire tablet is automatically backed up to the cloud and uses the Whispersync service allowing books, movies, and TV shows to be synced across multiple devices. Amazon also introduced a new web browser, dubbed the “Amazon Silk”. The pricing of the device severely crippled iPad’s pricing with $199 as opposed to the $499 price tag on a lower end iPad. The Kindle Fire will be available on November 15th, with Pre-Orders of the device starting today.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also took the stage today to introduce three new Kindle devices, aside from the Fire tablet. The Kindle received a redesign, with a new Kindle Touch, as well as a Kindle Touch 3G, taking advantage of 3G networks to access online services. Pricing is as follows: $109 for Kindle, $139 for Kindle Touch, and $189 for Kindle Touch 3G.

Amazon has answered back to the iPad 2’s success in recent months with a slew of devices of their own, including their new tablet. Are you excited about Kindle Fire? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

{via Mac Rumors}

Earlier today, Amazon launched an entirely new service that they had been working on, a web based iPad Kindle Reader called “Kindle Cloud Reader”. This new service allows users to utilize their Chrome or Safari browsers to access their Kindle eBooks. The Cloud Reader also supports the iPad version of Safari and successfully bypasses Apple’s subscription rules for apps.

Amazon can now implement any promotional feature for any book that they wish, without any regards to Apple’s rules, all the while earning 100% of revenue and still drawing on Apple customers. TechCrunch noted that the new feature is already up an running at http://read.amazon.com and that the feature is better than expected.

The iPad version is especially good because the store is fully optimized for the device. And you can easily switch back and forth between the store and your own library. It feels like a native app, but it’s not.

Apple has been receiving a lot of criticism about their new subscription rules, and companies are moving to entirely web based operations in order to sidestep Apple and retain all of their revenue.

Amazon recently complied with Apple’s rules by removing the Kindle Store button from their native application but with the new web-based solution the company work on its own terms without requiring any approval.

Have you used the new cloud-based reader? Do you still prefer the native app? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

{via MacRumors}

Up until now a rather confusing indexing system has been used to show where a reader is in a book, but now the familiar page numbers should help those of us who come from a life with the good old paper variety.

Updated to version 2.6, the new Kindle app also has support for Google and Wikipedia lookup as well as a reading progress indicator for both iPad and iOS. A new reading percentage is also available but only on the iPhone.

If you don’t already have the Kindle app installed (and why wouldn’t you!?) be sure to head on over and get it.

The Kindle app is free and is a universal app.

Jump back to the present and it seems that the early demise of the Kindle product line is not going to be so fast or simple. Amazon today announced that their eBook sales are outpacing regular hardcover book sales. For the last three months, Amazon sold 148 eBooks for every 100 hardcover books. Further, last month, Amazon sold 180 eBooks for every 100 hardcover books. These numbers defied all expectations. So what happened?

No one can say for sure what happened since Amazon does not release any data about where the majority of the sales were made and which device is used more extensively, but there were several factors that definitely helped. Aside from the hardware differences between the iPad and the Kindle devices (weight, display type, comfort in holding, etc…), Amazon dropped the price down on the Kindle devices. At $189 for the 6” Kindle and $389 for the 9.7” Kindle, these devices are priced much lower than when they were released and the math works much better. Avid readers who read multiple books each month realize the savings alone in the cost of the book. A reader reading 20 books a year will pay for the device in the cost saving when compared to purchasing hardcover books.

But the most interesting theory behind these numbers is that one of the reasons for the increase was the release of the iPad. On the same day of the release, Amazon’s Kindle App for the iPad was also released. Further, Amazon started a marketing campaign targeting iPad users. The purpose was to convert users from using iBooks to using the Kindle App. It looks like they succeeded. There is no doubt that the iPad as a hardware device is a great device and many people do not care about the display type when reading is involved. Amazon succeeded in doing something that many companies have failed. They turned the iPad into “their” device. They created a platform and delivery mechanism that worked the same across not just one device (the iPhone version of iBooks only became available recently) and allowed the user to switch between devices effortlessly with features such as location synchronization.

Jefferies analyst Youseff Squali’s analysis of the Kindle circulation estimates further supports this theory. Squali wrote:

We believe that Kindle’s e-book sales are benefiting from the launch of the iPad, since the Kindle e-book store offers a broad (and probably the richest) selection, with over 630K titles, which iPad owners can easily chose from. Our current estimates for 2H10/FY11 could also prove conservative as we assume only 10% Y/Y growth in Kindle device sales with no contribution to e-book sales from the iPad. A more probable scenario, based on a higher unit sales of Kindle and e-books, yields an additional ~$100M and $200M upside to our revenue estimates for FY10 and FY11.

Essentially, Squali deduces that due to a small growth in Kindle device sales, it is clear that the growth in eBook sales is due to other devices and specifically the iPad.

All of this leads to a very interesting question regarding who will be crowned king of the eBooks platform. Unlike iTunes, Apple does not have a first-to-market advantage when it comes to eBooks and has made some execution mistakes with iBooks. Barnes and Nobles is also making a move for this market and have released their own eBook reader application for the iPad. It is clear that Amazon is the current king but no one knows how long that will last for.

Which device do you use for eBooks? Are you an iPad reader using the Kindle App or the iBooks App? Which do you like better? Let us know your thoughts.