Smartphone business is one of the fastest growing industries but there is still a lot of room for further improvements. However, as attractive and potentially productive as the Smartphone business may be, it’s not worth the headaches and distractions it will cause to Amazon. Amazon is riding high with profits that still impresses Wall Street;company has a successful gadget deal with the kindle e-reader and the kindle fire, and a superior online presence. So, generally speaking, Amazon would want to get into the boundlessly larger Smartphone business.
The report goes that Amazon is planning to develop a Smartphone that will be able to compete with the iPhone and the Android devices, but some people think that this might be a bad idea. Analysts claim that the company should just stick to its core business. While the Smartphone business is very lucrative, there are only two companies that actually managed to achieve success: Apple and Samsung. Most of the other companies in this field did not manage to do that; this means the chances of them making a successful brand are razor-thin. The industry is filled with veteran companies all failing to regain some relevance, and it’s difficult to imagine how Amazon can enter a sphere full of very competitive brands and manage to make something different.
While Apple just like Amazon didn’t have any experience in making mobile gadgets before the iPhone, which turned out to be a success, Apple had a strong history of software and hardware developments. Google also achieved success in the mobile devices market, but this is because they stayed out of the Smartphone business itself. Instead they fostered the ecosystem by allies using their Android OS. It might be unclear how it will turn out for Google when they make their own hardware under the newly acquired Motorola, but they have some good momentum behind it. We could argue that Amazon’s brand is connected with kindle products, but how impressive are they? The Kindle Fire gained success when it came out, but the excitement that people got because of its price ($200) soon died out when Google released the Nexus 7.
The point is that unless Amazon makes devices that are very innovative and/or can change the way we look at Smartphones like what iPhone did, they will not make a significant impact to the industry. The industry is already full of other big companies that are underachieving, so they should have a good trick in their sleeves or this will be a great disappointment.