Amazon, open the Kindle before Apple eats your lunch!

Apple's iPhone is beating the Amazon Kindle at its own game -- what a shame. It doesn't have to be that way, though. Amazon could put the iPhone to shame if they'd make the Linux-based Kindle open to developers.

According to Wired:

Since the launch of the iPhone App Store in July, a book-reader application called Stanza has accumulated 395,000 downloads, and the app continues to be installed on 5,000 iPhones a day, according to a Forbes story. By way of comparison, Citigroup estimates Amazon will sell about 380,000 Kindle e-book readers in 2008.

I bought a Kindle earlier this year because I've been doing quite a lot of travel, and I didn't want to heft around half a dozen books in order to retain a fresh supply of reading material. On the flight to Tokyo earlier this week, I realized just how limited the Kindle really is. Sure, it's a great ebook reader, but it's a one-trick pony when it could be a killer device. I don't have to lug a bunch of books, but I'm still stuck carrying a separate media player, video game, and so forth.

It seems like a shame to me that the Kindle is so limited. You can export some documents to the Kindle, but it's clumsy. Amazon also likes to charge for the privilege if you're having material downloaded directly to the Kindle, if you use Whispernet to grab the content. You can read blogs, for a (admittedly small) price, and you can even browse the Web a bit using the experimental browser. You can even listen to MP3s, but the Kindle is hardly suited to being a music player. However, the device could be a lot more, and Amazon's investment would be minimal.

Amazon is missing out on two (if not more) communities that would drive success of the Kindle even further. The first is, of course, developers. Since the Kindle is a closed platform, Amazon misses out on driving sales through add-on applications that could add value to its device. Granted, the first generation Kindle is a bit low-powered for anything too hefty, but Amazon could easily make the Kindle 2.0 a better competitor to the iPhone and other handheld computing devices.

The second community is Kindle users. Sure, Amazon has lots of Kindle users out there, but they're not connected or centralized. Amazon does a good job of tending to a community of reviewers on its Web site. Why not enable them further by leveraging developers to create social applications for the Kindle, and allow the community to create content that might drive Kindle sales?

Sure, Amazon wants to use the device to drive sales of its electronic offerings, but it'd be nice if there was a variety of content for the Kindle not limited to Amazon's selection.

In fact, I'm probably missing all kinds of uses for the Kindle that others would be able to think of, if it wasn't a closed platform. At the very least, I'd love to see Amazon ship a Kindle-compatible reader application for Google's Android phones.

Even though Apple treats its developers like second-class citizens, the user experience for the App store is second to none. It gives me no pleasure to say that, but installing apps on the iPhone and finding new ones is a no-brainer.

But Apple doesn't have to be the only game in town. Amazon could provide some hefty competition to Apple if it chose to open Kindle development (and beef up the device a bit) and field its own application store.

Am I crazy? Should Amazon let the Kindle platform plod along as a simple ebook reader, or rev it up?