India’s well-known position as a smartphone-friendly market has forced Amazon to come out with a data-lite version of its Kindle app. Sized at 2MB, this app is available to Android users and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.
As claimed by Amazon, the Kindle Lite app is an India-first product which provides a host of features. These range from personalised recommendations, Whispersync (syncing your eBooks across devices), to offering free eBook samples.
They’ve also localised the content, catering to titles in languages like Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati and Malayalam, among others.
The highlight feature of the Kindle Lite, as informed by Amazon, is its low data consumption which also saves up space on the user’s phone. The Kindle Lite app can work on slow 2G or 3G internet connections, and patchy networks — something that’s a part of our country’s digital landscape.
As part of our continued focus on India, we are always working to improve the reading experience for our customers. Apps constantly compete for space on a mobile phone and Kindle Lite solves this problem for our readers.Rajiv Mehta, Country Manager, Kindle
To generate interest amongst users, Amazon is offering a special cashback offer of 80 percent, for those who pay for e-books bought from Kindle Lite app via Amazon Pay.
A few months back, Amazon introduced the web version of its Kindle app that can be accessed by existing Amazon account holders to read their purchased titles on screens besides the Kindle.
Such data-friendly apps have been a common strategy for global as well as Indian technology giants. Google has already designed a version of Android, called Oreo Go, that’s purely meant to run on affordable phones with less than 2GB memory.
The search-engine giant even customised its existing set of services like Google Assistant, Chrome browser and Gmail to work on entry-level devices.
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