You might not recall 2014 all that well, but we certainly remember Amazon’s Fire Phone. It happened so long ago that Stuff‘s original coverage has disappeared, but unlike the company’s other hardware, it didn’t fare well. But twelve years is a long time.
Long enough that the online retail and internet giant is giving it another shot, according to a report from Reuters. The point isn’t so much to put a new phone into the market, however. It’s more about giving more of Amazon’s customers access to its AI.
Amazon Transformer
According to the report, which cites four internal sources “familiar with the matter”, Amazon’s new smartphone project is called Transformer. That’s (probably) not the final project title, which will follow the Kindle to Fire pipeline. ‘Blaze’ would be a handy step up, but we’re guessing at that.
Its main purpose seems to be giving customers a consistent way to access Alexa’s AI functions while keeping the company’s storefronts in full view. Basically, it would be an AI/shopping platform in smartphone format, with a focus on the company and its partners’ services. That’s incredibly attractive for the company. The question is how to sell such a thing to its customer base.
Actually, the more pertinent questions are: What will it look like, what will it feature, and how much will it cost? Unfortunately, none of that information is available via the Reuters report. The Transformer project’s existence is confirmed, but the eventual specs, features, cost, and other conventional details are not yet known.
It’s also entirely possible that the hardware gets scrapped before anything further is announced. Amazon already knows, via its ambitious but doomed Fire Phone, how hard it is to enter a saturated market. It may be that the costs outweigh perceived benefits. Still, we’d put money on the company at least giving it a shot. The allure of Alexa AI in pockets around the United States (and soon, the world! Mwahahaha!) could prove too attractive for Amazon to leave this one in the design stages.
