Amazon gives iPhone the Kindle treatment

Amazon is expected to unveil a free application on Wednesday that will allow the same electronic books available on the e-tailer 's Kindle to be read on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch.

The program will be available for download on Apple's App Store and give users access to the same e-books, magazines and newspapers that Kindle users can buy on Amazon. The program's Whisper Sync service promises to keep track of a reader's place in their chosen book, allowing users to pick up where they left off on either device the Kindle or iPhone.

Photo stories from silicon.com

Photos: The tech that holds up the net

Photos: Top summer holiday gadgets

Photos: Sniffing out fraud with digital forensics

Photos: What gadgets were the Victorians using?

Photos: Unmanned 'spy in the sky' takes off

Minority Report: 10 top iPhone 2.0 apps

While other e-book readers such as Stanza from Lexcycle and the eReader from Fictionwise are already popular on iPhones, it is the first time that Kindle content has been made available on a non-Kindle device. The app release is Amazon's latest attempt to gain a greater piece of the e-book market. The e-tailer unveiled the second generation of its Kindle e-book reader on 9 February.

In launching the new app, Amazon is taking on Google, which last month launched a mobile version of its Google Book Search, giving Android and iPhone users instant access to more than 1.5 million public domain books.

Original article: Amazon to offer e-books on Apple devices from CNET News.com