A lot of people were interested when it was first rumored an Amazon tablet device was on the way. Cue the Kindle Fire, which has proved a massive success. Today we have news that Amazon could be reaching out further into the device market as it seems the giant company has plans for an Amazon phone to expand its ecosystem.
Despite the size of of Amazon it’s not easy for any company to move into the mobile device arena especially considering the amount of litigation concerned regarding patent infringements that virtually every major phone company seems to be involved in. Motorola, HTC, Samsung and Apple for example, are just some of the companies involved in ongoing patent issues and Amazon will certainly want to avoid joining the fray. Nevertheless because of the success of the Kindle Fire, Amazon may have decided that the effort to develop its own smartphone will be well worth it.
A new report from Bloomberg, brought to our attention by Cult of Mac, tells of rumors that stem from the ubiquitous “people with knowledge of the matter.” These sources say that Amazon is already working on an Amazon smartphone, possibly with the involvement of Foxconn, who of course are huge manufacturers of Apple’s iPhone. It also appears that Amazon could be well ahead in a bid to avoid any patent infringement lawsuits as the company is said to be in the process of obtaining wireless technology patents. As well as planning to buy wireless patents from InterDigital, and in talks with others, Amazon has hired a former senior director at Intellectual Ventures Management LLC, Matt Gordon. His former company holds more than 35,000 intellectual property patents. It certainly seems then as though Amazon is already carefully venturing into the phone market.
Whether an Amazon phone could make such an impact into the smartphone market as its Kindle Fire impacted the tablet market is a leading question though. Only a few days ago we told how Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and Apple’s iPhone 5 will set the whole trend for sales patterns this year, looking at previous releases and sales, and in the first quarter of this year Samsung and Apple have already sold 400 million smartphones between them. The Android and iOS platforms are so dominant, with the Galaxy S and iPhone being such a huge part of those platforms that it’s difficult to see whether Amazon could make such a huge impression with a smartphone, as it did with a tablet. However that was an issue debated when the Kindle Fire was first rumored and look what happened with that so who knows?
Moving into the smartphone market certainly sounds like a logical plan from Amazon. It’s strategy of providing a low-cost tablet to take advantage of its huge media assets, selling songs, movies and books has certainly worked. Of course an Amazon phone would certainly also be used by many owners to purchase Amazon content, making full use of the Amazon ecosystem. This Amazon smartphone conjecture is in the very early stages so there’s no news yet on what we can expect from the phone, what it will be called or when it may become available. It certainly seems though that an Amazon phone is in the works.
We’d like to hear your thoughts on an Amazon smartphone. Is it something that you might be interested in? Do you think there’s any way that Amazon could compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple in the smartphone world? Let us know with your comments.