The mobile phone is the device of the future and the companies not going after one are sure going to regret it. While Nokia may not have jumped on the smartphone bandwagon early on, it was smart enough to realize its mistake and is trying to make amends now. The iPhone accounts for around $150 billion of Apple’s revenues and Google is trying to gain a foothold in the hardware arena after it acquired Motorola for $12.5 billion. Samsung is a dominant player in the industry with its handset division as well as component sales segment. However, the company that everyone should be looking at right now is Amazon.
The online retail giant first made a fortune with the Kindle eReader around 5 years ago and then entered the tablet market with a storm by releasing the Kindle Fire, a 7” tablet for a mere $200. It was done in competition to Apple and when Google released the Nexus 7 a while ago, Amazon has recently replied by announcing a modified and superior version of the Kindle. The new tablet is called the Kindle Fire HD and has an 8.9” screen and comes with superior graphics and hardware and though it is priced at $299, which is $100 more than Google’s tablet, it will definitely be in direct competition because the better specifications justify the higher price. Moreover, Amazon is probably working on a smartphone that is going to be unveiled soon.
It is evident that the company is making all possible efforts to become dominant with its hardware because it is a known truth that the one who controls the hardware can dictate terms on the platform but the one who controls the platform has every option imaginable. This explains why the Kindle eReader was so popular. Now, with the Kindle Fire, it can modify the Android platform to whichever type it pleases and the highly customized version is quite popular with the users.
The same logic is behind the possibility that Amazon is coming up with a smartphone. An industry like that, which is growing by the day will hardly be the one Amazon will not enter. Moreover, if it can develop its own hardware for the smartphone, it can essentially have another product that it has total control over. The best option is to follow the same strategy it did as with the Kindle for marketing.
