“Reports on Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal in the last two weeks indicate Amazon is working with component makers in Asia to test a smartphone that could go into mass production at the end of 2012 or early 2013,” Therese Poletti writes for MarketWatch.
“Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., is an outlier on this topic, and doesn’t think it’s such a good idea,” Poletti writes. “‘Tablets make sense for Amazon, but a phone does not,’ Sebastian wrote. Because tablets ‘skew more heavily toward media consumption than smartphones, they are a natural fit for Amazon’s commerce and media platform,’ he said. ‘We believe that the smartphone market is inherently more challenging, costly, and fraught with risk as compared to the tablet market.'”
Poletti writes, “Sebastian writes that because the smartphone is really more of a utility device, where maps, voice search and email are among the most popular uses, Amazon would have to develop specialized apps for these functions, as well as sign alliances with all the carriers for distribution. ‘While Amazon’s likely use of a modified version of [Google’s] Android will virtually ensure there will be plenty of content in Amazon’s app store, we do not expect Google to port any of its key native utility apps onto an Amazon/Kindle device. Now that Google has launched its own tablet, the $199 Nexus 7, to compete with Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire, the two are going to become even more fierce rivals.'”
Read more in the full article here.
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