Amazon stumbled big time with its Fire Phone but is still keen on gaining some smartphone ground. The e-commerce giant is expected to take another shot with its ‘Ice Phones’ that it will be presenting in emerging markets including India since it’s almost impossible to challenge Samsung-Apple duopoly in the west.
This time around, Amazon’s Android phone will include a full suite of Google Apps (for the first time). The company generally prefers sticking to its own ecosystem of apps and services even for its Fire line of tablets, so including of Google Apps marks a major shift in Amazon strategy.
According to Gadgets360, Amazon will be bringing in affordable 5.2-inch and 5.5-inch display phones with Snapdragon 435 chipset, 13MP camera, 2GB RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. The price is expected to be around Rs. 6000. The phone won’t be replacing Google Assistant with Alexa and that’s probably wise considering the fact that affordable buyers don’t really care for such enhancements.
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Amazon’s first forayed into smartphone space with its oddball Fire Phone. It wasn’t well received either by consumers or tech community and its weak sales reflected in the heavy price cuts that followed in the next few weeks of its official launch.
The Ice phones will take a completely different approach to the Fire phone. Amazon has had ample experience selling phones in India and its brand value will help Ice phone enter public mindshare. So, this could perhaps work and help Amazon push its apps and services in the Indian market and also use these phones to garner user data that it can channel to its AI systems.
We could see the first Ice phone hit retail shelves as early as this year.
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