

Amazon smartphone reportedly in production, set to go on sale in mid-2013 - rmah
http://9to5mac.com/2012/12/17/amazon-smartphone-reportedly-in-production-set-to-go-on-sale-in-mid-2013/

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Steko
By all accounts Amazon makes something like the 4th best tablets but they have
managed a solid second place sales showing because of their dedicated
distribution channel, heavy marketing, loyal and affluent base and reputation
for customer service.

It will be interesting to see if they can carry this over as strongly to
phones because the distribution is heavily dependent on carrier stores. Even
the iphone, which is widely available from Apple's website and retail shops as
well as Wal-Mart/Target/etc and Amazon itself, still relies on carrier stores
for something like 65% of it's sales in the US.

Amazon is either going to settle for low numbers with 90%+ of their
distribution through Amazon itself or ... they will be competing hard against
Samsung to get promoted at carrier stores. I hope it's the latter because Jeff
Bezos is very smart and knows that 4th place hardware and special offers
aren't going to cut it against the summer flavor of the Galaxy S.

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randallu
It is so incredibly depressing to watch Amazon blow an amazing opportunity
with shitty software. They can outsell anyone, but the Kindle Fire OS work is
dreadful -- if they could manage to build a competitive UI then they could
probably march way ahead of Android-proper on browser usage metrics (as well
as whatever they use internally to measure engagement). They seem to spend a
huge amount on Kindle Fire, they're competitive with Barnes & Noble but not
Google or Apple.

I'm betting that most of the Kindle Fires that Amazon do sell end up "in desk
drawers" and don't drive many further sales for them -- and it's entirely
because the software is so awkward to use (the first Kindle Fire was pretty
clunky in industrial design, and the new ones aren't wonderful but at least
they're competitive excepting the hard-to-use power switch).

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jseliger
>It is so incredibly depressing to watch Amazon blow an amazing opportunity
with shitty software.

They also seem to habitually make unforced design flaws. I have a third-
generation Kindle (I think), which works well enough, but the Kindle
Paperwhite looks attractive. But it only allows flipping pages through a
finger swipe; there is no dedicated button.

That's a recipe for a screen covered with finger prints and schmutz. On my
current Kindle, I probably use "page forward" about 49 times for every one
time I hit any other button. A single, discreet "page forward" button would be
a huge UI win. When I played with one in a Staples, this was an obvious
flaw—so obvious that I sent an e-mail to kindle-feedback@amazon.com to tell
them as much.

An iPad or iPhone are much more general devices, but a Kindle is mostly for
reading. Leaving this obvious, easy button off the Kindle is really annoying,
and I think it's symptomatic of Amazon's a) Apple envy, which b) leads them to
make design decisions that try to ape Apple without necessarily doing it well,
or without recognizing what problems Apple is trying to solve and what
problems Amazon is, or should be, trying to solve.

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atrus
> But it only allows flipping pages through a finger swipe; there is no
> dedicated button.

While true that there is no dedicated button, a tap will turn the page. Your
thumb doesn't have to leave the frame/casing to initiate a page turn.

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chopsueyar
I would like a phone with an e-ink display (like the non-Fire Kindles).

I assume battery life would be quite impressive.

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makmanalp
I have one of these:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone#F3>

Solid as a rock, ridiculous battery life and dirt cheap :)

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chopsueyar
How long have you gone on a single charge?

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bryanlarsen
I used to be able to get about two weeks.

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brianwillis
I don't have high hopes for the first generation of any Amazon product. The
original e-ink Kindle was expensive, slow, ugly, and had an extremely limited
range of books. The original Kindle Fire was slow and buggy too.

In saying that, Amazon could very well be the best company in the whole
industry when it comes to iterating and improving. The current e-ink Kindles
are pretty extraordinary products. When Amazon commits to building a product,
they don't just give up if the first few attempts don't pan out, unlike some
of their competitors (I'm looking at you Microsoft Zune).

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MatthewPhillips
The original Kindle was priced competitively for its day. It was better than
all of the other e-readers of its time in almost every regard, and in the most
important aspect, book selection, it wiped the floor of the competition.

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smackfu
I'm pretty sure it was mainly screen cost driving the price.

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bambax
Having bought a Kindle Fire HD (nice hardware, fairly disappointing software),
I agree that it's impossible that Amazon isn't about to make a phone. That's
where they're going; everything they want people to do on a Kindle Fire could
be done on a phone, that you have with you at all times.

If it's really cheap ($100 doesn't seem impossible since the HD is only $200)
it could work.

I still find the restricted and zoned app shop not very exciting. I rooted the
Kindle Fire HD, but even then, many apps from the Google Play Store are said
to be "non compatible" with the version of Android on the Kindle. (They are
actually compatible if you export the APK and import it on the Kindle, but
it's a fairly complex process to just install apps!)

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mmanfrin
I don't see how they will differentiate themselves. Kindle Fire was the first
$200 android tablet, their new version is super cheap and comes with a
$50/year data plan. But with phones? They can't compete on price (already many
free recent-generation Android phones out there), they won't compete on
quality (Amazon is all about making things accessible price-wise).

Seems to be the only possible thing they could do vis-a-vis a Kindle Phone
would be to sell it with an incredible wireless plan -- which I can see them
doing. $50/month, 2Gb data, free data for all Amazon media? Watch Amazon Prime
Videos without using your data?

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hayksaakian
That would be despicably ingenious. Would you rather watch that movie on
netflix and kill your data cap, or watch as many as you want on amazon?

At what point to anti-competitive regulatory bodies have to step in?

It's almost as if the carriers handed their customers to amazon on a silver
platter at that point.

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klipt
Well there goes Net Neutrality...

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eli
This story is _extremely_ thinly sourced. Unnamed "industry sources" quoted in
a publication I've never heard of that, according to its homepage, is being
shuttered for good in two weeks.

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meaty
Is it just me or are Amazon starting to look like 'omni consumer products'
these days?

Diversification yes but jumping on every bandwagon...

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johnrgrace
Wait, you think a film studio was too much...

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randallu
If they start a nuclear reactor business then GE will really be in trouble!

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johnrgrace
No, then they won't pay ANY taxes. They'll just reprocess the fuel and build
some nuclear weapons.

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programminggeek
An Amazon phone is only interesting if it can do something interesting with
phone plan pricing, but with all the strides that have been made in prepaid
phone plans, Amazon could really do something interesting.

A $200 phone with a $10, $20, or $30 plan would probably do well. They could
resell AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, or even Verizon like Straight Talk, Net 10, and
Virgin Mobile USA so.

Prepaid is starting to hit a much more mainstream audience with smartphones,
so Amazon could time this really well.

