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Amazon Fire Phone 2 Is Coming Soon

Amazon doesn’t want to give up on its attempt to make a name for itself on the smartphone market. The first Amazon Fire phone was not received too positively by critics or consumers and was soon forgotten.
Now the giant online retailer has announced that it’s currently working on a new phone called Amazon Fire Phone 2 and it’s expected for release in 2016. Tech blogs said that Amazon has been working on their upcoming phone for months but returned to the drawing board after the first attempt failed.

Amazon did not comment too many details about the new phone but in October they said that they will not give up the Fire Phone idea and hoping it will catch on like their most famous product, the Kindle electronic reader, which is the most popular e-reader around. The Kindle was not received too positively when it was first released so Amazon is hoping that the same will happen with the Amazon Fire Phone 2.

Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices, David Limp said that they will keep working on the new phone and improve the software on it. He added that with each new product Amazon releases they learn something new. Limp said that there’s nothing more they can do but release a product and hope that people will like it.
Amazon has been struggling with the first version of Fire Phone since it was release this summer.

Because of the poor sales, the company lost approximately $170 million in the last quarter of 2014. It was left with more than $83 million worth of unsold smartphones. Although the Fire Phone comes with some pretty special features like the 3D parallax display and the Firefly identification software, people remained unimpressed and the phone was soon forgotten, not selling very well.

Limp said that one of the reasons the first Fire Phone failed was because of its high price. The Fire Phone was first released exclusively at AT&T for $199 (32GB) and $299 (64GB) on contract. Following the poor sales, the price was dropped to 99 cents.
Amazon Fire Phone 2 is hoping to make it up for its predecessor’s mistakes.
Image Source: androidcentral

Amazon in talks with HTC about smartphone partnership

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In a bid to release an Amazon smartphone, the e-commerce giant has been in contact with Taiwanese company HTC, to try and draw together a smartphone fitted with Fire OS and HTCs design aesthetic.

Amazon has had a partnership with Foxconn for their Kindle Fire tablets and used their own design principles, but for the smartphone they may look to HTC for the hardware schematics and focus on building a smaller version of Fire OS.

Reports say Amazon has been locked in talks since June this year with HTC about the smartphone and they have still to reach a decision, even though previous reports say Amazon will announce the phone sometime next month.

HTC has always been a company ready to try out new platforms, they were one of the first with Nokia to test out Windows Phone and became the only partner for the Facebook Home Android launcher, both have not fell in their favor.

Nobody quite knows what Amazon is planning with the smartphone, we may see something competitive in the high-end market with a low-end price or a new 3D smartphone with four retinal cameras and facial recognition, personalised to your eyes.

Whatever Amazon is preparing to do, we expect the killer feature here to be the price. Amazon has been known to extend far beyond the usual, offer free shipping for a full year for only $75 and putting the Kindle Fire into an iPad dominated market.

There is a report circulating that Amazon will offer this smartphone for a one-time price ($199/299) and the user has to sign up for a two year Amazon Prime membership, but this one comes with LTE, calls and texts benefits bundled.

This move would be huge for two reasons, one is a lot of people have Amazon Prime and would love a $199 smartphone and two is this would increase Amazon Prime members in the long term.

Amazon and HTC may become smartphone partners

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We have heard various leaks surrounding the Amazon smartphone and now we have news the e-commerce giant is working with Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC.

The two companies have reasons for partnering up, Amazon is still new to the hardware market and may not have the necessary tools to make an incredible smartphone and HTC needs more products to make money for them.

Amazon has reasons for stepping into the mobile market, for the last three years the company has been building the Kindle Fire around a condensed version of Android and the smartphone may be a way to continue this on a smartphone.

The problem with Amazon’s current OS model is its built on consumption, making the user want to read a book, view a movie or dive into an app. It is not great for messaging, email, Facebook browsing, things needed to build a great smartphone.

If Amazon steps into the smartphone market, they need to make a phone to compete with the iPhone 5S and Galaxy S4. They need a phone with a lot of features that are not necessarily services but simpler ways to do things and awesome features like Siri.

HTC has a pretty awful track record when it comes to supplying demand. Windows Phones from HTC have been rather poor, the Facebook smartphone was a disaster and attempts to hop into a new market have failed for the company.

They have made incredible smartphones on HTC, but the company is general is starting to decade with the internal management jumping ship and the consumer enthusiasm dropping, even with the better smartphones.

Amazon is great at marketing devices, they have their big e-commerce homepage to entice people into a cheap phone. The question is can this become something people enjoy using or will it be another half-loved gadget for a cheap buck.