Amazon launches Kindle Lite, an India-first product for reading on slow networks

The Kindle Lite app takes up only 2 MB of storage space and retains most of Kindle's original features. Amazon is also bundling an introductory cashback offer on the first ebook purchase. 

To popularise the adoption of its Kindle reading app, Amazon released a data-friendly version of the product in India. Kindle Lite, the beta version of which had been available for a while, was officially launched on the Play Store.

The Kindle Lite app is surprisingly light at 2 MB as opposed to the actual Kindle app which takes up 47 MB of storage on a device. Amazon has tailored the new app for Android users on 2G/3G networks in India, where mobile internet connections continue to be patchy.

Kindle Lite is an India-first product from Amazon. The Seattle-based firm joins global peers Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft in rolling out India-centric products to cater to the country’s burgeoning smartphone population. In some cases, these products have eventually gone global after finding success in India.

Rajiv Mehta, Country Manager, Kindle, said:

“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. Kindle Lite is less than 2MB and built to provide a great reading experience even on 2G/3G networks.”

Kindle Lite comes with interesting features such as personalised reading recommendations, instant reading (without having to wait for the full book to download), image zoom, night-mode, font size options, and Whispersync (that allows cross-device syncing of the ebooks).

More than 30,000 free ebooks in English, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati and Malayalam have been made available. The ebooks can be downloaded and stored for offline reading as well. Amazon has also announced an introductory offer wherein users can avail up to 80 percent cashback on their first purchase if they pay using Amazon Pay Balance.

Kindle Lite has notched up 50,000 downloads already. It is rated 5 out of 5 on Play Store. Early days still, but users seem to be relishing the reading experience and the fact that it is “light” on their devices.

Website: Kindle Lite