I've never read on a kindle but I have used the iphone app. Until this post I never thought of them as a platform but you're absolutely right.
Will be very interesting to see where they go with it. Bezos maybe be as good as Jobs from a product perspective so I trust they'll do quite well with it.
Blake, great post. This hits an interesting trend which I think about a lot.
Creating a market by pushing a product that's too early for it's time
Examples: Apple
iPod - push before good way to get MP3s
iTunes Store - Sell digital music before you'd consume one song at a time
App Store - now that you are ok with $0.99 transactions, sell apps
In-App Purchase - Free is best, so why not let people buy extensions to free content.
Apple's Future - we own the content distribution, consume where you want it. By the way, we own the content distribution.
Example: Microsoft XBOX
XBOX - expensive hardware sold at cost to push state of the art in console games
XBOX 360 - connected gaming on advanced hardware
XBOX Live Accounts - Play your friends with a username, did we mention you can maybe buy something cool too...
XBOX Platform - now you're online and have an account with "points", do you want streaming netflix movies?
XBOX Future - we own the content distribution, consume where you want it (console, handheld, iphone). By the way, we own the content distribution.
Example: Kindle
Kindle 1 - too early for mass market. If you buy an expensive reader, you will probably buy books. Only read kindle books/content
Kindle 2 - still expensive, larger content available, only read kindle books/content
Kindle Opened - we own the content distribution, consume where you want it. By the way, we own the content distribution.
Notice a pattern: Push the state of the art, get customers ready by having an easy way to consume more content(get their credit cards tied to accounts), provide great content, let them consume it where they want as long as you control the distribution.
Seems to work pretty well to me. Now I just need to go make a platform...