Again and again we hear that Amazon is preparing to enter the smartphone market. The online retailer has been expanding its business in recent years and is now selling everything from books to infrastructure and various web services.
In the consumer electronics market, Amazon is present with its Kindle ebook readers, Kindle Fire tablets and FireTV set-top box. A smartphone seems like a missing piece of the puzzle and an obvious step forward for the company.
According to The Wall Street Journal report, Amazon will announce its smartphone by June, and is currently showcasing early prototypes to developers in San Francisco and Seattle. The upcoming device will sport one cool technology no other phone has at the moment — it will be able to display 3D content without requiring special glasses. While we’ve seen something similar on the HTC Evo 3D and LG Optimus 3D, the way Amazon’s smartphone will do this is nothing short of amazing. It will rely on four front-facing cameras and retina-tracking technology to achieve a hologram-style effects that should put everything we’ve seen before to shame.
Although that sounds cool, selling phones does come with a caveat. For one thing, Amazon will have to deal with carriers on a scale it hasn’t done in the past. We’re sure they’ll be heavily subsidizing the phone and monetize on user’s engagement with Amazon’s suit of services; one have no problems envisioning an Amazon phone shipping with Amazon Appstore, Amazon Video, Kindle and Netflix preloaded. This way, they will be able to keep making money long after the phone has been purchased.
But is that enough? The smartphone market has its own big boys like Apple, Samsung, Lenovo and many others, all of which will be quick to copy any cool features Amazon may offer on its first smartphone. In any case, we’re up for another interesting year in the mobile world. And we want to see Amazon shaking things up, don’t you? 😉
[Via: TheVerge]