Another major player may be entertaining the smartphone realm. And it's a familiar name that's already challenging Apple in the tablet market.
According to a research note released to investors Friday by Citigroup's Mark Mahaney, Amazon will release a smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2012. “Based on our supply chain channel checks in Asia led by Kevin Chang, Citi’s Taipei-based hardware research analyst, we believe an Amazon Smartphone will be launched in 4Q12," the note read.
If accurate, the device would be aimed at eating into Apple's growing smartphone market share. What's more, the device will be developed with the assistance of Foxconn, one of Apple's biggest manufacturing partners.
"Based on our supply chain check, we believe FIH is now jointly developing the phone with Amazon. However, we believe that Amazon will pay NRE (non-recurring engineering fees) to FIH but the device and multiple components will actually be manufactured by Hon Hai’s TMS business group (the same business group that makes Amazon’s E-reader and the 8.9” Amazon tablet)," Mahaney says. "We believe the smartphone will adopt Texas Instrument’s OMAP 4 processor and is very likely to adopt QCOM’s dual mode 6-series standalone baseband given QCOM has been a long-time baseband supplier for Amazon’s E-reader.”
At this time it is assumed, but not yet confirmed that Amazon's smartphone will be powered by Google’s Android operating system.
Source: All Things D
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