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Amazon has worked its way into nearly every internet-based market since it arrived online in 1994. The company has branched into cloud-based services that power some of the most popular websites in the U.S. It has become the largest online retailer; the company boasts a line of successful tablets and e-readers, and has most recently emerged into the streaming TV market. But the last frontier for Amazon will be the smartphone market — one it is planning on stepping into during the second half of this year, according to various reports.
While Amazon has been pitted against Apple in some aspects — the tablet and streaming TV markets, specifically — creating its own smartphone hardware will launch it into possibly the most competitive communications technology industry. And Apple is not even the top vendor; Samsung’s dominance of global sales is staggering. The IDC calculates that Samsung owns 31.3% of the entire worldwide market, more than double that of second banana Apple.
VISUAL CONTEXT: SAMSUNG SMARTPHONE DOMINANCE
Source: IDC
The company will have to differentiate itself - and many speculate that it will do so through the use of bleeding-edge display technology and attractive pricing. But other analysts speculate that where Amazon will truly strike gold is through creating a phone to maximize its online retail presence. The Wall Street Journal points out that a smartphone would enable Amazon to retrieve all kinds of location and shopping data about users that would improve upon its ability to tailor its retail presence to consumers. While details of the phone’s operating system and other specifications have not been revealed by Amazon, many are using the company’s launching price of $200 for its Kindle Fire tablet as a gauge for what the price of an Amazon smartphone will look like.
Brand analysts also suggest that pricing is going to have to be key for Amazon to be even remotely successful in the market that has seen so many flops and dramatic downfalls such as Microsoft’s Windows phone and the long slide of BlackBerry. CNET quotes Kantar Worldpanel analyst Carolina Milanesi as she describes why pricing will be the clincher: Amazon is not considered a high-end brand for consumer electronics, which means competitive pricing ”has to be the way . . . If you don’t go cheap, you have to rely on the carriers.”
And Amazon has not revealed its planned partnerships with carriers either. So with all of the unknowns still out there, the company has a lot to prove to go up against the juggernaut that is Samsung/Apple.
