Amazon Smartphones Coming in 2014?

There's this article on a Serbian blog that I write for that got me thinking about the cost-effectiveness of having a Amazon smartphone on the market. You can read the full mobile industry analysis here if you can translate it, but I will focus on what I feel is important for this blog - the news that Amazon is interested in making a smartphone! Considering their awesome success with the Kindle Fire tablets I bet that this would be a great investment.

I hate the name, but I think we all get the idea

 Will this be the forgotten Amazon Blaze? I have to admit that I love that name and that I would really love a series of phones using it as their commercial title. Just imagine the marketing possibilities: Amazon smartphones - BLAZE your way! And if they published a few with the Firefox OS that would be hilarious! Anyway, I should really get back to the point of this article, but even I am not sure what that is. Maybe a shocking headline could help us focus more?

HTC to Make Amazon's Smartphones?

 Oh, doesn't that catch your attention all of a sudden? The fact on the matter is that HTC is currently standing on thin ice and they need a good business partner to help them save their company. In Q3 of 2013 the company had actually lost a money - a total of $101 million which isn't a small sum of money by all means. A deal to make phones for Amazon would certainly help HTC not just by allowing them to make more money, but by improving their reputation.

 Let us face it - not a lot of people in the US know about this company and they don't think of it as the most reliable and trustworthy brand out there. Their cooperation with Facebook doesn't seem to have provided much so maybe Amazon will bring them more luck?

 Also, if you choose to believe Bloomber, then HTC and Amazon have been talking about this for a long time - in fact all the way back in June they started to plan ahead?

Amazon Prime = Free Phones?

 So this is a possibility right? Let us say that if you subscribe to Amazon Prime for a year (or two) you can claim your Amazon smarthphone device for free. Wouldn't that be a great thing from a consumer point of view? And what about Amazon, will they have further profit from this? Their Kindle tablets are already being sold dirt cheap, but they are certainly generating more than enough income via Amazon's ecosystem.

 However, will phones pay for themselves via app purchases and product sales? What sort of specs, quality and features should we expect from Amazon? Would you get the Amazon smarthpone if it required to to subscribe to Prime? Would you invest $199 in it if it offered only mediocre specs?