launch in a Seattle warehouse a device that mixes company say it is holding discussions with Vodafone content, customer services and hardware. and O2 in the UK about possibly launching there. Best known for its online shopping mall, Ama- By December or January - after the big back to zon also controls a global network of warehouses, school and holiday sales - it should be clear how well one of the world's largest commercial cloud stor- the phone is doing in the US, says Mr McQuivey. If age operations, and has access to a growing Amazon reduces the price or adds more benefits, catalogue of digital music, movies and films - such as an additional year of Prime membership, it expanded weekly with the launch of a Spotify-like would be a sign that the initial launch underwhelmed music streaming service. the market and a rethink was needed. The Fire sports a 3D display that uses four infrared 'There are levers that Amazon could still pull if it cameras to track users' head motion and pivot games needs to,' he says. or maps in line with how the viewer is looking at them. Source: from 'Anazon eyes onine sabs boost through "Fire' smartIt also has a visual search tool named Firefly. phone'. Financial Times, 1906/2014 (Mackin, S.). With Firefly, a user can point the phone's camera at anything from a book to a shaker of salt or a poster and either extract and save information - such as an email address - or navigate directly to a product page Discussion questions on Amazon to buy it. 1 What is driving Amazon's entry into the 'What we saw was an opportunity to prove some smartphone market? Is it an ego trip? new capabilities that really hadn't been done before 2 How does it fit in Amazon's vision 'to be in premium smartphones,' says lan Freed, Amazon's earth's most customer centric company; to vice-president for the Fire phone. 'We've seen innobuild a place where people can come to find vation stagnate a bit over the past two to three years.' and discover anything they might want to buy Analysts with Jefferies, the brokerage, estimate online'? that Foxconn, the phone's manufacturer, will produce 3 What strategic focus does the move signify? roughly 200,000 phones a month in the coming months. What alternatives are open to Amazon and Amazon decline to comment on plans to launch how could Amazon pursue them? the phone in Europe, but people familiar with the