A man holds the new Fire smartphone by Amazon.com Inc. during a demonstration at a news conference in Berlin, Germany, on Monday, Sept. 8, 2014. (Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
More than a decade after its first attempt went down in flames, Amazon may be planning to release a new phone.
The company envisions the new device connecting to its Alexa voice assistant platform as well as being another way for the retail behemoth to reach its customers, Reuters reported.
What we know:
The new phone would be designed to give Amazon users personalized features to allow them more convenient ways to shop online, use its other services like Prime Video and Prime Music, and use third-party apps to order food, the news agency explained.
The move comes 12 years after Amazon released its Fire phone. The much-hyped, but ultimately doomed device, cost the company tens of millions of dollars.
What we don't know:
Reuters’ was unable to confirm its report with Amazon at the time. LiveNOW FOX also reached out to Amazon and was told the company did not have any information to share about this.
When and if the phone would be released was also not available. Reuters did not confirm a timeline and pointed out that the project could be scrapped before it ever sees the light of day.
Dig deeper:
Citing four individuals familiar with the effort, Reuters explained designers foresee the phone using artificial intelligence to reduce the need for app stores and logging into multiple services to use them.
While Alexa could be tightly integrated into the phone, reportedly code named "Transformer," the voice assistant may not serve as the operating system.
Amazon's been burned before
The backstory:
This would not be Amazon’s first foray into making a smartphone.
In 2014, the company took a crack at competing with Apple, which released the iPhone 6 that year, and Google’s Android operating system.
Its Fire phone came with much fanfare that particularly highlighted its three-dimensional capabilities. The device’s four front-facing cameras could take 3D selfies. Users could also see some objects on its screen appear in three dimensions, allowing them to peek around the sides of whatever was on the screen.
The phone almost immediately flopped. Amazon pulled the devices from their virtual shelves just 15 months after its July 2014 launch and suffered a $170 million write-off on the project, the BBC reported at the time.
The Source: This article included information from Reuters, FOX News, and the BBC. The story was reported from Orlando.