Figures 1 & 2: Option to Buy Now and purchased book

Thanks to commenter mimbrava, who pointed out in the comments of our review of the Kindle for iPhone application that purchasing of titles directly via the application is possible, however, the feature is buried in the unlikeliest of places. If you have a sample of book on your Kindle for iPhone and you navigate to the very last page of the sample, you'll find two links as depicted in Figure 1 above. The bottom link says "See details for this book in the Kindle Store" and launches Mobile Safari on the iPhone or iPod touch, so that you can check out the price. The top link simply says "Buy Now" and upon clicking it the book is immediately purchased as it begins to download and you are taken immediately to a screen like the one pictured in Figure 2 above with the option to Start reading, Go to Home, or to immediately Cancel this order. If you cancel the order, you are taken to another screen titled Order Cancelled that reads: "You have cancelled your order for [BOOK TITLE AND AUTHOR]. A refund will appear on your credit card statement and the book will soon be removed from your local library." This no frills statement is followed by a large Go to Home button.

The experience is very easy, and the only real problems with this is that there is no notification about how much the title you are purchasing costs when you buy it via this method and the only way you can purchase titles directly from the Kindle for iPhone application is to have already preloaded samples of the books you want to purchase in the application (either via your computer or via Mobile Safari).

So that's nice, but what's the big deal? Well, the big deal here is that clearly purchasing titles directly from the Kindle for iPhone application works in the current version of the application. This means that Apple is not preventing this functionality, as some people have speculated. So, now it is clear that the only thing preventing Amazon from building a mobile Amazon Kindle Store into the Kindle for iPhone application is Amazon themselves.

Dear Jeff Bezos, Please add this functionality ASAP. Thanks!