While the rumors of Amazon making their own Android tablets proved to be true, we have also been hearing that Amazon might be interested in entering the smartphone market as well. However fast forward to 2014 and we still haven’t seen or heard anything yet, apart from rumors and speculation.
A new report from The Information has revealed that those plans may finally come into fruition later this year, where Amazon could be looking to launch their smartphone, which is reportedly known internally as Project Aria (not to be confused with Google’s Project Ara), in multiple markets including the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Much like Amazon’s Android-based tablets, chances are the smartphone, if it is running a forked version of Android, might run into distribution issues in foreign markets. As it stands even until today, Amazon’s Kindle service is not as widely available and there are still countries in the world that Amazon’s Kindle cannot be purchased officially or have its ebooks bought officially as well.
This is one of the potential problems highlighted with the phone so we’re not sure how Amazon plans on getting around it. The report also claims that Amazon has negotiated with several US carriers to help them launch the device, but no names have been revealed yet.
Also similar to what they have done with their Kindle Fire tablets, Amazon will not be manufacturing the device themselves but could turn to other companies, but no company has been named yet either, although in the past HTC was reportedly a candidate.
Not much is known about the phone for now, but in the past it was suggested that we could be looking at features such as 3D object recognition which would be an interesting feature to have. There was also reports that the phone might even be made free of charge to Amazon Prime customers.
Filed in . Read more about Amazon.