A new smartphone, with a display screen that is capable of showing three-dimensional images even without the need for special glasses, will soon hit the very competitive market of mobile technology, which has been ruled by two big companies Apple and Samsung over the recent years.
If we were to believe the unidentified sources mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, Amazon will announce the said smartphone later in June and start to ship the units later in September, prior to the holiday season.
Pricing and specs of the unit remain unclear. It was also not clear if the phone would run on Android operating system, which already supports Kindle Fire, the tablet of Amazon.
The sources also said the company has been exhibiting the handset versions to developers in Seattle and San Francisco. They revealed Amazon would make use of a retina-tracking machinery rooted in four cameras or sensors that are front-facing, which, in turn, would make the images look like 3D. This aims to differentiate its mobile phone in the marketplace.
"I don't know how they'll differentiate with Samsung. There's nothing really that different," said another source from the company.
In spite of such a unique feature, a market researcher said the mobile device would hardly bring Amazon to the center of the mobile arena to compete against the dominating companies Apple and Samsung. The present arena has little room for newcomers, as no vendor got over 5 percent, the IDC said.
Recall that when Kindle Fire came out, market watchers thought it could be a likely competitor to Apple's iPad, but results show it failed to even come close to surpassing the tablet market.
Reports say Amazon is on the move to go further into making and designing hardware. However, the company has a different approach than other companies when it comes to this. According to Jeff Bezos, chief executive at Amazon, he favors that the company profit from the sale of services through the hardware instead of a profit from the devices.
Besides creation of hardware, the company has been enticing more developers to create at the Amazon app store that has now 200,000 apps.
Just last week, Amazon unveiled its Fire Television. The company likewise revealed a wand would be available soon, which would help customers scan barcodes of products at home for re-ordering groceries and other items without the need to log into computers. Last year, it also launched new versions of the Kindle Fire tablets.
