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After the success of the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon is considering making a phone. The online bookseller-turned-everything-seller is reportedly working on a Kindle Fire 2 and could knock up its own smart phone too. But what would it be like — and would it ever come here?
Bloomberg reports those slippery “people with knowledge of the matter” have revealed scant details, except that the phone is set to be built by controversial Chinese technology manufacturer Foxconn. Foxconn also builds kit for Apple, Microsoft and many more.
Our only experience of Amazon hardware is the Kindle line of ebook readers and the 7-inch, budget-friendly Kindle Fire tablet. If the Kindle Fire is anything to go, an Amazon smart phone
— Amazone? — could be a cheaper model designed to undercut rather than directly compete with the smart phone heavyweights such as the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy S3 and HTC One X.
The Kindle Fire is hugely successful in the US but hasn’t winged its way across here yet — meaning it’s pipped to the post by the similarly-sized and similarly-priced Google Nexus 7.
The Kindle Fire stands out from the crowd of Android tablets thanks to its heavily customised Android interface, which is geared towards serving up movies, music and more from Amazon. Amazon even has its own online app shop, the Amazon Appstore, so there’s already a back end and plenty of content in place for a phone to take advantage of.
Presumably, an Amazon phone would borrow from the Kindle Fire interface, although I’m guessing that a phone is less of a multimedia portal and would probably need to retain more aspects of regular Android.
It’s probably a way down the road anyway — besides which, on past form, Amazon wouldn’t exactly hurry to bring a phone to this green and pleasant land.
Would you buy an Amazon phone? Could the Amazone mount a serious challenge to the rest of the smart phone pack? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.
