Amazon prepping cheap-as-dirt smartphone? Amazon may be prepping a low-cost smartphone for release next year, and their partner in its development is said to be Apple's iPhone assembler, Foxconn. "Based on our supply chain channel checks in Asia led by Kevin Chang, Citi's Taipei-based hardware research analyst, we believe an Amazon Smartphone will be launched in 4Q12 …
Here comes someone who _REALLY_ knows how to monetize "the shopping experience" and they are definitely not going to be doing it via any of the operator frameworks. There could be some grounds for discussion with Google, Apple and MIcrosoft. There are none with Amazon - there the operator is the bitshifter and there is no doubt about it.
That won't make a dirt-cheap smartphone unless they sell it under cost. $150 is ~110 euros. You can get a Samsung Galaxy Mini for 90 euros on PAYG then free it up. I know this isn't the most advanced smartphone in the world but it's nearer dirt cheap than $150 plus profit margin and does all the things anybody who wants a smartphone based on cost needs to do.
"With the clear success of the Kindle e-Reader over the past 3 years, and Kindle Fire possibly succeeding in the low-priced Tablet market, we view this as the next logical step for Amazon."
I'm not so sure. Phone users are likely to buy apps (which are relatively low-margin) but e-books and film/TV are a pretty poor experience on a phone. If the (statistically irrelevant) usage patterns of smartphones that I've observed amongst my friends and I is accurate then the most common activity is web browsing - and I don't see how Amazon can monetise that.
Just because its amazons name on the phone, doesn't mean they actually build it...from your comment either your an apple fanboi or winpho delusionalist
Either way your jibe is lame to say the least.
Funny how Android is the leading platform and winpho is a far 3rd place......
The building has nothing to do with it - the point is, it's a phone made under the direction of an online retailer - it will be made to their spec and the OS (which as I mentioned is based on that one made by, yes, an advertising company no less) will be tweaked to their liking. The fact it's actually assembled by a far-east company is completely irrelevant, they're just doing what Amazon tells them to.
Amazon's and Google's business models are all about making money from, respectively, selling you high-street general bumf and putting adverts in front of your eyeballs. Android, and this Amazon phone, are simply vehicles to achieve those aims, and nothing else.
The fact that the article implies the Amazon phone will be sold at zero profit, or even at a loss, demonstrates this perfectly obviously, so why can't you see that?
At least Apple and Microsoft/HTC/Nokia/Samsung are proper hardware/software makers so their raison d'etre is to make money from making a good product out of good hardware and good software.
The recent "What Mobile" magazine Mobile Phone of the Year 2011 award went to the Nokia Lumia 800, running, of course, Windows Phone. There's your proof, right there.
I expect that might be viewed as illegally monopolistic behaviour. A hardware manufacturer isn't competing when it supplies competitors. It's just supplying, which is its business. What it supplies, is deterrmined by what it can make and by what its customers ask for.
Yup, that icon looks like a lawyer to me.
Apple doesn't have a monopoly on Smartphones. They can certainly sign a valid contract with a supplier to go exclusive with them... if the supplier accepts it. The supplier shouldn't, but it's a bit surprising Apple don't have the clout to push the issue considering how big a contract that is for the supplier.
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