Last week, it was reported that Amazon is in the design and development stages of having a smartphone created that will sell at a lower price point than the more popular devices. The company is said to take a similar approach to the one they used when setting the bar for the cheap tablet industry with their Kindle Fire.
More recently, MarketWatch has acquired general information pertaining to Amazon’s efforts and plans:
Officials at some of Amazon’s parts suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Seattle-based company is testing a smartphone and mass production of the new device may start late this year or early next year.
One person said that the screen of Amazon’s smartphone currently being tested measures between four and five inches.
As stated above, Amazon is reportedly toying with display concepts measuring approximately four to five inches. Moreover, most mid to high-end Android-based smartphones feature displays of greater than four inches and, as rumored for quite some time, Apple’s next-generation iPhone is likely to sport a screen closer to four inches than its predecessors. This would at least help to put the Amazon smartphone on the same playing field as competitors.
As for a release date, the previously mentioned unnamed source suggests that Amazon will begin gearing up for production near the end of this year or by early next year – presumably after selecting and testing a finalized design.
Stay tuned for complete coverage on Amazon’s rumored smartphone.
