

Amazon hires Charlie Kindel, ex-Windows Phone exec - pixxa
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/joke-amazon-hires-windows-phone-vet-charlie-kindel-something-secret/

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pixxa
Speculation of course is that this is the foreshadowing the arrival of Kindle
Phone.

A more intriguing possibility is that Amazon is setting stage for its next
move in Platform Wars. Between his gigs at Microsoft & Amazon, Kindel was an
advisor to the Buddy mobile cloud platform. (See
[http://www.geekwire.com/2011/exmicrosoft-mobile-exec-
charlie...](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/exmicrosoft-mobile-exec-charlie-
kindel-joins-advisory-board-buddy/) ) Many other startups (such as parse.com,
ubran airship) are attempting to build this layer, most of them built right on
top of Amazon AWS, but it is hard to imagine such a product going mass-market
amongst developers without the trust of a brand such as Amazon.

Amazon is in great position for this. AWS is probably the best-regarded major
cloud platform amongst developers, in contrast to Apple's trouble in wooing
developers to use its cloud platform (
[http://rms2.tumblr.com/post/46505165521/the-gathering-
storm-...](http://rms2.tumblr.com/post/46505165521/the-gathering-storm-our-
travails-with-icloud-sync) .) While Google has enormous cloud resources, they
are mostly there to serve Google's own purposes, not to mention its "spring
cleaning" practices which make the developers less than comfortable. This
leaves nice space for a flanking campaign by Amazon: to create a universal
mobile cloud services API that works well across all platforms.

If true, this could move the basis of competition away from the device and
toward the cloud (and in Amazon's favor) and may lead to the establishment of
a third (and thus different) mobile platform beyond iOS and Android. Note that
this approach mirrors Amazon's Kindle consumer strategy: to sell their own
hardware, but also to proliferate their platform on all other devices.

Interesting times to come...

