Amazon’s first attempt to design and sell a smartphone didn’t go very well. But according to a report from The Information’s Amir Efrati, Amazon isn’t giving up on the smartphone space.
Instead, the company is reportedly in talks with smartphone makers that might bundle Amazon features with their phones.
If the company manages to work out deals with smartphone makers, you might see features like Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant software and Firefly camera app for identifying real-world objects on upcoming Android phones. But the phones wouldn’t necessarily have the Amazon brand name. They’d be manufactured and sold by other companies.
There are already some phones that have the Amazon Appstore, Amazon Kindle, or other apps pre-installed. But Efrati’s sources say the new plan is to go even deeper, and integrated Amazon’s services “at a ‘factory level,'” whatever that means.
On the one hand, this might be more appealing than a phone that sometimes seemed like it was more designed more to sell you things than to be useful. On the other hand, it’s hard not to see this as an attempt to add bloatware to phones that already have access to Google’s apps and services.
via 9to5Google