Amazon just released a free application for iphone and ipod touch that allows users to download and read any eBook from Amazon’s Kindle store on Apple’s popular mobile devices. Amazon’s Kindle Application for iPhone and iPod touch is now live in the App Store. It allows access to hundreds of thousands of Amazon Kindle format e-books (we assume the whole 200K plus library).

The Amazon Kindle for iPhone application  is Free, but it looks like books need to be purchased from Amazon directly via PC or Mac and transferred over or from the iPhone via Mobile Safari. Most e-books should run $9.99. Like with the Kindle device itself, you can sample first chapters for free, adjust text size and bookmark. You can’t annotate but you can view Kindle annotations. The free program brings several of the Kindle’s functions to the iPod and iPhone’s much smaller, non-E-Ink screen, including the same electronic books, magazines and newspapers that Kindle owners can buy and the ability to change text size, add bookmarks, note and highlight stuff. From what we can see at first glance of the application itself, there’s no dictionary or search.

If you already have both a Kindle and an iPhone, Amazon ’s program syncs the two so that you can keep your bookmarks on both devices. Immediately after loading up the application, this worked exactly as billed and the page we’re on in the Kindle 2 showed on the iPhone.

Whispersync is also enabled so you can start reading on the Kindle, switch to the iPhone and basically go back and forth without losing your place. Books you have already purchased for the Kindle, of course can be placed on the iPhone or iPod touch as well.

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