Amazon could be launching a smartphone next year in the Kindle range of devices. Just this week the Amazon Kindle Fire was launched in the US. The Fire is Amazons first tablet and is based on the Android 2.3 operating system although a highly customised version.
It is expected that Amazon will launch the Amazon Kindle Phone sometime in 2012.
“Based on our supply chain channel checks in Asia led by Kevin Chang, Citi’s Taipei-based hardware research analyst, we believe an Amazon Smartphone will be launched in 4Q12. Based on our supply chain check, we believe FIH is now jointly developing the phone with Amazon. However, we believe that Amazon will pay NRE (non-recurring engineering fees) to FIH but the device and multiple components will actually be manufactured by Hon Hai’s TMS business group (the same business group that makes Amazon’s E-reader and the 8.9” Amazon tablet). We believe the smartphone will adopt Texas Instrument’s OMAP 4 processor and is very likely to adopt QCOM’s dual mode 6-series standalone baseband given QCOM has been a long-time baseband supplier for Amazon’s E-reader.”
The price of the Kindle Phone is expected to be good with build prices estimated at between $150 and $170. It is expected that Amazon will not make much of a profit margin on the first smartphone device and perhaps give
it a price tag of $200 or less. Although the operating system isn’t known for this device, it is likely that Amazon will use a custom fork version of what is used on the Kindle Fire (aka, Android). We’re not sure at the moment if that will be 2.3 or if Amazon will adopt a newer version of the OS by this time next year when the Kindle Phone is expected to launch.
Source: 1, 2
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