It looks like Amazon is getting back into the smartphone game. More than 11 years after the e-commerce giant abandoned development of its unsuccessful first effort, the Fire Phone, the company is now working on a new smartphone codenamed Transformer, Reuters reports, citing anonymous sources.
The device is being developed by the company’s Devices and Services division and will come with personalized features that will make it easier to use Amazon’s suite of apps, including Amazon Shopping, Prime Video, and Prime Music, the report said.
The smartphone will also support Alexa, the smart home assistant that Amazon has invested heavily in, adding AI chops and expanding support to work with most of the company’s devices. AI capabilities are said to be a big focus of the smartphone, and are seen internally as a way to encourage Amazon customers to use the company’s AI products, Reuters reported.
The smartphone is said to be being developed by a relatively new division within the devices division called ZeroOne, led by J. Allard, a former Microsoft executive who helped develop the Xbox.
The news comes as Amazon is fully committed to AI, recently investing $50 billion in OpenAI and forecasting $200 billion in capital spending in 2026 for AI, chips, and robotics efforts.
The company spent more than a year refining the Alexa assistant with generative AI features, and finally launched it as Alexa+ in February of this year. The assistant retains its smart home capabilities and can now do most things other AI chatbots can do, including planning travel itineraries, updating shared calendars, finding and saving recipes to a library, making movie recommendations, helping with homework, and exploring topics.
Amazon declined to comment.
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