Mobile Phone Blog:

Right then, folks, at the end of last year, there was a rumour going about, which said that Amazon, after the success of the Kindle Fire, where going to be looking at making their own smartphone. I did a blog post about it, and at the time, my opinion was that if it were to happen, I wasn’t sure if Amazon would be able to crack the market.

Well now, according to Bloomberg, there’s a new rumour going around; allegedly, Amazon are no longer looking at making a smartphone, they’re actively working on one, right now. There’s no word on what it might be like, but since the Kindle Fire runs on Android, it’s not too much of a stretch to suppose this alleged smartphone will do likewise. If it’s happening, that is…

Yeah, there’s the rub, really. Y’see, the source link cites that old cliche, ‘people with knowledge of the matter‘, and I’ve come to never really trust any bit of news that includes that phrase, or anything similar. So there’s that. However, there’s also the fact that Amazon’s business (in terms of the Kindle Fire) is all about content delivery, and that seems to be a much more natural fit with tablets, than with phones, where it sort of needs to be about being a phone, as well.

Although, having said that, I know how much I use the Kindle app on my HTC One X…

However, there’s another side to this story, and it’s a curious one. Amazon are allegedly also looking at buying up patents to do with wireless technology, which seems to be a way to forestall other companies trying to sue them for patent infringement. Now yes, that could be useful in mobile phones, but there’s another possibility: a Kindle Fire with a 3G antenna on it, instead of just Wi-Fi.

If they were going to make a phone, though, my gut feeling is that the logical choice would be to make a phablet, like the Samsung Galaxy Note. Nice big screen for reading and watching movies, y’see.

As always, time will tell…

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