14 DAY TRIAL // Amazon is making a bigger commitment to PDF files for its Kindle line of devices, with an investment in Foxit Corporation, maker of the similarly named PDF tools.
The sum invested or the technical details of the deal have not been revealed, but the two companies say that Amazon will use Foxit technology to boost PDF support on Kindle devices.
"[Foxit] will be working with Amazon to support PDF reading in Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps," Foxit announced.
The two companies aren't saying much beyond this, but it's easy to see why Amazon would want to improve PDF support in its devices and apps.
Initially, Kindle devices didn't even support PDF files. The second generation Kindle introduced support, but only for some files and they still had to be converted to Amazon's proprietary format. This meant that not all files survived the conversion process.
Things have gotten better in more recent devices, but the situation is still not ideal.
On the other hand, Foxit software is pretty much the only viable option except Adobe's own technologies, for writing or reading PDF files. That said, it is still intriguing that Amazon decided it needed PDF technologies so bad that it had to invest in Foxit.
It may very well be that Amazon is interested in Foxit expertise more than its technology.
In any case, it should be good news for existing Kindle users as well as future ones. With the Kindle Fire selling in the millions and being expected to make up a huge chunk of the Android tablet market into the next year, more people than ever are going to be using Amazon devices.
As a side note, even as it builds better PDF support into its devices, Amazon has no plans to start supporting the standard EPUB format any time soon.