Amazon Fire's ambition is not only to be an e-commerce company, but also a platform

Back in January 2007, Steve Jobs released the first generation of Apple iPhone , the first modern smartphone. With its multi-touch and numerous sensors, this phone had revolutionary features and completely changed the mobile phone industry.

Now, Amazon has released its first smartphone, the Fire phone. Like other Amazon hardware products, this phone focuses on ease of operation and practicality - making it convenient for users to shop on the Amazon website.

However, if you think that Amazon's phone is just a mobile shopping device, you are wrong. Unlike other traditional Amazon devices (such as the Fire Phone tablet), Amazon hopes that the Fire Phone smartphone will change the smartphone market with its 3D effects and gesture operation.

The phone is expected to be shipped on July 25. Whether it can compete with Apple's iPhone and Android phones remains to be seen. However, according to Amazon's description, the Fire phone has enough "highlights" to attract Android and Apple iPhone users to switch to the Amazon platform. Amazon, which has always been known for its patience and endurance, seems to be fully prepared to impact the high-end smartphone market this time.

Beyond “touch” and “swipe”

The key to Amazon's success in the smartphone market is that it needs to make the Fire phone go beyond the "touch" and "swipe" functions, which have become the "rule" in the smartphone field since 2007. On the Fire phone, Amazon uses a feature called "Dynamic Perspective" to allow users to perform common tasks with one hand just by moving their head or the phone. Amazon Fire phone relies on a set of sensors and four cameras with special functions on the phone to achieve all this.

The biggest highlight of the "Dynamic Perspective" feature is that it can make pictures, charts and games present a visual difference effect, making static objects seem to "move", just like the Apple Logo floating on the wallpaper. However, Amazon's "Dynamic Perspective" is applied more deeply and more widely, and it has expanded to the user interface field.

Amazon's "dynamic perspective" technology divides the screen image into multiple layers, and when the user watches at different angles, different layers of 3D effects will be produced. Relying on the four front cameras of the phone, the Fire phone can recognize the user's head position and distance in front of the screen to achieve the 3D function.

The most attractive feature of this new phone is the gesture control function by shaking the phone. For example, when reading a book in the Kindle app or viewing a web page in a web browser, users only need to tilt the phone up and down to scroll the page in the corresponding direction. In addition, users can also flip through files, view hidden menus, or display Yelp review information on a map by tilting the phone.

In addition, the four cameras on the Fire phone can also allow users to have a better image browsing experience when shopping on Amazon. For example, through gesture control, users can switch and browse between different product images when viewing products on Amazon.

Another feature on the Fire phone smartphone, called "Fire phonefly," has a large application market in the field of e-commerce. Fire phonefly is a photo scanning service that can identify objects, QR codes, etc. Users can take a photo of an object, and Fire phoneFly will actively help you find it and provide purchase channels and prices. This feature can be activated with a button (even if the phone is in sleep mode). Not only that, Fire phonely can recognize objects, music, videos, and capture links to Amazon shopping with the help of cameras and smart technology.

In addition, this feature has other market development potential. For example, it can identify and call paper phone numbers, it can identify paper email addresses and web links. Although there are applications with this function on the market, Amazon said that Fire phonely can be quickly launched by button, and it is more deeply integrated with the operating system of this phone (although the Fire phone operating system is developed based on the Android framework, it is very different from it).

Therefore, Amazon seems to be going all out to try to change the operating mode of smartphones. Compared with tablets, Amazon's ambitions for smartphones seem to be greater. In the tablet field, Amazon has done an "admirable" but not disruptive job.

Obstacles

However, Amazon still faces several obstacles in its attempt to overturn the smartphone market: First, the Fire phone is only sold through AT&T carrier channels in the United States. Amazon's exclusive launch strategy will not last for just a few months. This means that users who want to buy this phone must change their carrier network. In fact, this is the same strategy that Apple implemented back then, but at that time, the iPhone had almost no other competitors of the same magnitude. However, even so, this exclusive sales strategy later became a big problem for Apple.

Second, the Amazon App Store has grown to 240,000 apps, but only 25% of them are available to iPhone or Android users. Amazon said it is filling the gap by adding popular apps such as Instagram, Snapchat and Uber. In addition, the company said it has attracted a group of new app developers who will improve their standard Android apps to support the new features of the Fire phone. However, whether other developers will buy in is still a question.

The second is the price. Although previous rumors have said that the price of this phone will be much lower than that of Apple's iPhone and Samsung's flagship smartphones, in fact, this phone is not cheap, and is about the same price as its competitors: the price of a two-year contract phone is US$200 (about RMB 1,245), and the price of a bare phone is US$650 (about RMB 4,046).

Although the price is the same as that of iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S5, users who purchase Amazon Fire phone can also get a year of free Amazon Prime membership service worth $99 (about RMB 616). However, compared with the $99 discount, consumers may care more about the price.

Yes, the Fire phone will be a platform for consumers to buy Amazon products, but it will also be the next big smartphone platform.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.