When Amazon launched the Fire Phone last week, they did so to much fanfare, with an event in Seattle and a pretty big introduction from Jeff Bezos himself. In case you missed it, Amazon’s Fire Phone follows in the footsteps of their Kindle Fire line and offers some interesting features like the Dynamic Perspective that the display gives to users looking at maps or just navigating the phones user interface. Packed full of cool features, Amazon’s Fire Phone is certainly going to prove an interesting experiment, after all it’s not every week you see an online store enter the smartphone market.
Unsurprisingly, industry players LG and Samsung are apparently paying close attention to how successful the Fire Phone ends up being. Despite the fact that previous carrier exclusives have failed on AT&T like the HTC First, Amazon isn’t to be underestimated. Will full control of selling and marketing the device on Amazon.com, one of the world’s most visited websites, we can’t see the Fire Phone going the way of the First. According to the Korea Times, LG and Samsung will be paying attention to how the 3D interface is received by consumers and whether or not such a feature could be implemented into their future devices.
In the smartphone game, it’s not surprising to hear big players keeping an eye on the competition – that’s a given – but to hear that Samsung, one of the world’s most successful smartphone brands is paying attention is interesting. It’s clear that Amazon has spent years researching the Fire Phone and with all the software features consumers could want, Amazon is one of the few companies to go it alone right now. Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Sony and others are all using Google’s Android, with Nokia using Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Meanwhile, Amazon has created their own OS and platform from open source Android code, thus creating their own experience from head-to-toe with no middleman.