Amazon Preparing to Release Smartphone
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -1.70% is preparing to release a smartphone in the second half of this year, according to people briefed on the company's plans, part of a broad push into hardware that would pit it against Apple Inc. AAPL -0.74% and Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE +0.29%
The retailer has been demonstrating versions of the handset to developers in San Francisco and its hometown Seattle in recent weeks, these people said. People briefed on the company's plans have been told that Amazon aims to announce the phone by the end of June and begin shipping phones by the end of September, ahead of the holiday shopping season.
The people said Amazon hopes to distinguish its phone in a crowded market with a screen capable of displaying seemingly three-dimensional images without special glasses, these people said. They said the phone would employ retina-tracking technology embedded in four front-facing cameras, or sensors, to make some images appear to be 3-D, similar to a hologram, the people said.
