Amazon.com is reportedly developing its own smartphone that would compete with Apple’s iPhone, Bloomberg News reported citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
The reports are not new, as a Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney speculated last year that the online retail giant is planning to release a smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2012, the report said.
Chinese mobile-phone maker Foxconn International Holdings is said to develop the handset for Amazon that would also compete with handheld devices that run Google’s Android operating system, the sources revealed.
Amazon, which tasted success in the low-end tablet market with its Kindle Fire, is acquiring wireless patents to protect itself from infringement allegations, like the earlier raised by Apple.
The company has also hired Matt Gordon, earlier served as senior director of acquisitions at Intellectual Ventures Management, as general manager for patent acquisitions and investments and intellectual property expert.
In February, IDC report revealed that Apple led the Smartphone market with the launch of its iPhone 4S worldwide, followed by Samsung which broke the 30 million units mark for the first time.
Amazon planned to buy wireless patents from InterDigital before the assets were sold to Intel for $375m.
Amazon is also said to be preparing for the release of a second-generation Kindle Fire by the end of this year, which is expected to rival Apple’s popular iPad and the Android-powered tablet Nexus 7, unveiled by Google last month at Google I/O.
