Is Amazon challenging the iPhone?
RUMORS abound that Amazon is in the process of developing a smartphone that could compete against the Apple iPhone.
According to the Bloomberg report, Chinese ODM giant Foxconn is working with Amazon to create an Android smartphone. People with "knowledge of the matter" claim that Amazon is also looking to acquire patents that cover wireless technology to help it defend against allegations of infringement.
Since Amazon has already enjoyed considerable success with its Kindle e-book reader and tablet hardware, a smartphone would be the next logical step. After all, Amazon already has most of the infrastructure in place that would be required by a smartphone. It has a flourishing app store and media distribution service.
On top of that, the company has experience of handling the carriers thanks to its Amazon Wireless store.
It also has experience with Android, having heavily reworked Google's mobile operating system for use on the Kindle Fire tablet. In fact, the version of Android that Amazon dishes out with the Kindle Fire is so heavily customized that it hardly looks like Android at all.
Read more at ZDnet.
