A WSJ reports claims that Amazon is currently working with vendors in Asia to test a smartphone, implying that the online retail giant is hoping to enter the smartphone market as well – after the runaway success of its Kindle Fire tablet.
With Google now officially also in the tablet hardware game, as well as Microsoft, the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle Fire are definitely in for some heated competition in the coming months.
Amazon is expected to launch its smartphone only by next year, with commencement of mass production scheduled for later this year. Some reports indicate the device would be quite large, fitting in the smartphone-tablet hybrid form factor, with a display-sized between 4 to 5-inches.
For now, there’s been no word which operating system the Amazon smartphone would run, and if it would be proprietary. However, looking at the success of the forked Android on the Kindle Fire, Amazon may just go down that route again – a highly customized Android OS.
Looking at the Indian perspective, the Amazon Kindle Fire (read our review) never took off here for a reason – most of its exclusive services did not work in India, making the tablet only as good as any other Android tablet, with some disadvantages, such as the smaller Amazon Appstore for Android, and slower than normal operating/firmware updates.
We wonder if Amazon would be looking at a global market with its new smartphone, and if it is, it really needs to address these issues if it intends to compete on even footing with other major manufacturers.
Source: WSJ