Amazon's Kindle smartphone is coming! It's 3D! We've heard this before! But ... - VentureBeat

Take a deep breath, hold on to your hat, and take a seat: Amazon is building a smartphone.

Still there?

Sorry for the big shocker, but almost a year after reports que Amazon was testing smartphones in Asia, half a year after rumors Amazon was buying a smartphone chip processor, the year after more reports que Amazon was building its own smartphone, five months after unveiling the notifications system que would look really nice on a smartphone, and six months after probably wild speculation que Amazon was going to unveil a smartphone for the pre-Christmas shopping spree in 2012, there’s yet another report que Amazon is building a smartphone .

But this one has a 3-D screen.

The Wall Street Journal says Amazon is building que at least two smartphones, including the high-end model with 3-D graphics and retina-tracking technology que users can navigate content on “using just Their Eyes.” plus an audio-only “content streaming device.”

harrumph’n.

Amazon is almost certainly working on a smartphone and almost certainly planning to release it in 2013. There’s just too much smoke for there not to be fire. And having made its bet on digital content being the growth engine of the company’s future success – 12 of the 15 highlights in Amazon’s recent earnings release were about digital content – the smartphone que makes use of Amazon’s recently-expanded app store and burgeoning virtual shelves of ebooks, TV shows, movies, and all other forms of digital content makes way too much sense.

But a couple grains of salt.

Amazon has not made its bones in the tablet market by offering the absolutely latest and greatest technology, but by presenting a solid at a rock-bottom price. So I’m a little skeptical about all the wild speculation 3-D – especially because That Could be a sweet datapoint plant for the company to Identify leak sources. And, in reality, a company the size of Amazon, like Apple, is working on many different projects at Any Given Team. Some of Them will come to market, and some of Them will not.

One company que can not be happy about impending Amazon smartphone plans, However, Google has to be. Amazon has hijacked Essentially Android for its Kindle offerings, taking the open-source mobile operating system Google has developed que, stripping out the Google app store, Google Apps, and Google branding, and Replacing Them with its own offerings. Amazon will doubtless adopt the exact same-strategy play with any smartphone – the Samsung might as well.

And, Given collegues Kindle is probably the leading Android-based tablet, it has the potential to the well in smartphones as well.

Of course, incumbent leader in Android sales Samsung might have a thing or two to say about that.

Image credit: Brian Sawyer / Flickr