Amazon smartphone reportedly in production, set to go on sale in mid-2013 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon smartphone reportedly in production, set to go on sale in mid-2013

9to5mac.com

39 pointsrmah41 comments

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.

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.

And pricing.

Absolutely. I think I was originally trying to say something about how the other factors were very apple like but they combined it with a pc vendor mentality (rock bottom prices, licensed os) and got lost trying to make sense of it.

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).

Sure enough. Amazon does backends like no one else, but the KF doesn't look or work all that well.

On the other hand, the UI on the eInk Kindles works pretty well. It may not be a thing of beauty, but it's highly functional. Of course, there's a big difference between a special purpose UI designed to do one thing well and a general purpose UI that's intended to do many things.

>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.

> 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.

I can page turn on my Paperwhite by rolling my thumb just a little bit, and rolling it back. I keep it on the edge of the bezel while reading.

I used to think that a button would be better, but the buttons on my third gen kindle were terrible and my Paperwhite is fine without them.

You don't think there are practical reasons to avoid adding a hardware button that gets pressed every time you turn the page?

I've owned a touchscreen Kobo, with no page turn buttons, since May. It's just fine. No undue fingerprint smudges or damage, no trouble turning pages.

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

I assume battery life would be quite impressive.

A fair bit of it is audio output and the wireless radio, however it would be thoroughly impressive.

shut up and take my money ! :)

Does a regular Kindle have scrolling lists? Draggable components? I wonder if the UI concepts in Android (or any smartphone OS) will translate well to e-ink.

Scrolling lists, yes, though the update lag makes it barely tolerable. It seems well-tuned enough underneath, like closing your eyes and scrolling on an iPhone.

I have one of these:

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

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

How long have you gone on a single charge?

I used to be able to get about two weeks.

Terrible for texting though. Only shows 12 letters on the screen.

Also, doesn't have most punctuation or capital letters :)

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).

Amazon's main edge over the competition (in more than just the electronics) has always been two things: price and convenience. I know many people (myself included) who have changed their purchasing habits because of Amazon Prime.

They're trying to do to digital goods what they did to physical goods, and so far they seem to be pushing forward quite well.

If you look at the Kindle device itself, it is made to be cheap. Even the entire "Special Offers" program is an attempt to focus on the rapid consumption of content. I'd argue that Amazon is one of the few companies that can successfully pull off a device with advertising baked in to the user experience.

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.

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

You couldn't pry the PaperWhite out my dead hands, I love it so much (as their 3 month wait-list also attests). If it took them some iterations to get there, it should be worth the wait.

Well, if the Amazon phone runs the Kindle Fire OS, it won't truly be a 'first' iteration, so hopefully it will turn out pretty well. I'm not sure how difficult it will be for them to get 3G/4g working well, but it seems to me like that would be the most significant obstacle.

> 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).

Ironically, it was Microsoft the ones who knew how to iterate and never gave up (it is not good enough until version 3).

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!)

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?

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.

Well there goes Net Neutrality...

If Apple and Samsung are making $200 off of each phone, that's a lot of space for Amazon to slip into given they don't care about phone profits.

They're making $200 off each phone after subsidy from the carriers -- consumers pay $0 on decent/good phones, or great phones on sale. GS3 was $0 recently, as was the Galaxy Nexus.

Only price-point they could compete on is unlocked, but that will be tough with the Nexus 4.

Right, there's no way to take advantage of that $200 if they work with an existing carrier's plans. Their opportunity is by cutting the subsidies as well as the price, so that the monthly price is significantly reduced.

Well, I get a better deal than that now, other than the free Amazon data part. Even that's not a compelling reason as I have little desire to watch movies on my phone.

Now if they let me piggyback my tablet over their phone to watch videos then maybe. Even then, probably not.

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.

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

Diversification yes but jumping on every bandwagon...

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

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

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

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.

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