Amazon Fire Phone
June 18, 2014
Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, has unveiled his company's new Fire Phone at a press conference in Seattle. Designed for one-handed use, the smartphone is larger than Apple's iPhone and is expected to run on a modified version of Google's Android system, already used for Amazon's Kindle tablets.
Bezos extolled the virtues of the phone at the launch on Wednesday, with its image stabilizing camera, free storage on the Cloud Drive service and flat cords for ear pieces to avoid wires getting tangled.
A new feature will let users take bar codes, phone numbers and book titles with the camera and then be led towards buying the item on the Amazon site. The Firefly system also has audio recognition, so it can listen to a song and direct users to the Amazon site to buy it later.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that AT&T is to be the exclusive carrier for the new phone when it becomes available in the US market.
The Fire Phone launch comes at a time when sales of Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets appear to be slowing. The company's first gadget was a Kindle e-reader, released in 2007.
Samsung and Apple dominate worldwide smartphone sales with 46 percent of the market between them according to technology marketing data company International Data Corporation. IDC data indicates that Amazon's market share of the tablet sector now stands at 1.9 percent, about half what it was a year ago.
As the Fire Phone was presented, Amazon's stock rose 3 percent, to $334.44 (246.55 euros) in afternoon trading.
jm/kms (AP, Reuters, AFP)