Amazon hires Charlie Kindel, ex-Windows Phone exec

Speculation of course is that this is the foreshadowing the arrival of Kindle Phone.

A more intriguing possibility is that Amazon is setting stage for its next move in Platform Wars. Between his gigs at Microsoft & Amazon, Kindel was an advisor to the Buddy mobile cloud platform. (See http://www.geekwire.com/2011/exmicrosoft-mobile-exec-charlie... ) Many other startups (such as parse.com, ubran airship) are attempting to build this layer, most of them built right on top of Amazon AWS, but it is hard to imagine such a product going mass-market amongst developers without the trust of a brand such as Amazon.

Amazon is in great position for this. AWS is probably the best-regarded major cloud platform amongst developers, in contrast to Apple's trouble in wooing developers to use its cloud platform ( http://rms2.tumblr.com/post/46505165521/the-gathering-storm-... .) While Google has enormous cloud resources, they are mostly there to serve Google's own purposes, not to mention its "spring cleaning" practices which make the developers less than comfortable. This leaves nice space for a flanking campaign by Amazon: to create a universal mobile cloud services API that works well across all platforms.

If true, this could move the basis of competition away from the device and toward the cloud (and in Amazon's favor) and may lead to the establishment of a third (and thus different) mobile platform beyond iOS and Android. Note that this approach mirrors Amazon's Kindle consumer strategy: to sell their own hardware, but also to proliferate their platform on all other devices.

Interesting times to come...