We all know how Amazon has been giving tough competition to the iPads and other handheld tablets in the price segment thanks to the Kindle Fire, and it should not come as a surprise if it comes out with its own smartphone anytime soon.
To take this a step further, Citigroup’s research team predicts that Amazon will put the Smartphone in market in Q4 of 2012.
According to Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney, his hardware research team in Taipei, which is being led by analyst Kevin Chang, makes a prediction that Amazon is working with Foxconn to develop the phone for release late next year. This is based on what the team has seen in the supply chain in Asia. The team feels that the phone may run on a TI OMAP 4 processor, and will cost Amazon somewhere between $150-170 to build, but may be sold at a very low margin to give some tough competition to other devices. The main aim behind this phone may be that Amazon wants its Amazon App store to reach out to more people.