Another tech giant has joined the smartphone wars.
In a presentation by CEO Jeff Bezos on Wednesday in Seattle, Amazon unveiled its long-rumored Fire Phone. The phone, in some ways, will act as a scaled-down version of Amazon's popular Fire HD tablets, also running a modified version of the Android operating system.
The 4.7-inch screen isn't as big as Samsung's Galaxy S5, but it's still at an industry-standard level among high-end flagship phones. The same can be said about its 2.2 GHz processor, 13-megapixel camera and 2 GB of RAM.
However, the phone's tie-in with Amazon's media brands and new features make it stand out among rivals.
With a trend in smartphone media moving more toward the consumption of video, the Fire Phone will integrate with the Amazon Instant Video service available to Amazon Prime subscribers. Like most higher-end phones, Amazon's new device will have access to content providers like ESPN and Netflix. In the e-reader category, where Amazon's hardware division first got its start, the phone will allow users to rent books
Visually, the phone's most notable attribute is its use of 3-D technology. In Bezos' presentation, he demoed the 3-D capability using both centuries-old art and the phone's maps app. Fire Phone will also contain Firefly, an app that can be used to scan and buy items, recognize music and TV shows, and use image-to-text conversion for a variety of uses.
But as Amazon launches what it hopes will be its next sensational multimedia device, it must avoid the fate of past phones with well-known brand-name associations.
Just last year, Facebook Home set out to be an all-encompassing social network experience on the HTC First smartphone. Within weeks, the price of the device was cut due to poor sales.
"Consumers weren't dying for a Facebook experience on their phone," analyst Daniel Matte said in an interview with Forbes.
Bezos is betting that an Amazon experience will attract consumers better.
ESPN tried to become a cellphone player by offering ESPN-branded phones. The 800-pound gorilla of the sports media market partnered with Verizon to try to become a mobile provider. The failure was so massive that Mobile ESPN was scrapped after just seven months in 2006, having signed up only 30,000 out of a targeted 500,000 subscribers.
In 2007, Disney also had to shut down its Disney Mobile network after partnering with then-Sprint Nextel on bandwidth.
Amazon certainly isn't trying to build its own mobile network. The Fire Phone will be available exclusively on AT&T starting July 25. Yet, with flagship phones from other companies now allowed on a wide range of mobile networks, it's possible that Amazon's exclusivity effort could backfire.
The Fire Phone's biggest weakness may lie in the number of apps available to subscribers in an era where Apple's App Store and Android's Google Play rule the roost. Currently, the App Store offers 1.2 million apps and Google Play approximately the same.
Amazon's offerings reportedly tripled last year, but its Appstore still only contains about 240,000 apps at the moment. With so many phones attached to either Apple or Android, app developers large and small may not find it worth their time to produce software for a small market-share Amazon product.
When Amazon.com started 20 years ago, it was only an online bookstore. Since then, it has undergone a meteoric rise to become the world's largest retailer.
It's hard to think of a major misstep the company has taken. In getting into the smartphone game, the Seattle-based company may face its steepest hurdle of all.
