Amazon Phone

And so it begins. Amazon is taking advantage of years of poor Google execution and moving to fill the void. It is finally deploying the pieces it has put in place over the past few years to start moving its purchasing and content ecosystem into phones at the OS level. Content first. Apps, photo sharing, contacts etc soon. And some time in the future, perhaps, a Fire Phone.

Available on Verizon Wireless Android phones starting with the DROID DNA by HTC. Get seamless access to Amazon digital content and shopping right from your phone's home screen. Interact with Amazon digital content you already own, access over 22 million songs and Kindle books, and shop millions of physical products in a single, fully-integrated, and easy-to-use experience.

This sort of pre-load / embed solution is lower-risk and easier to execute than a full-on 'Fire Phone', with a completely forked Android and custom hardware: phones are harder than tablets in all sorts of ways. HTC makes it and (with VZW) distributes it, Amazon adds the sizzle.

I saw a job ad that's almost certainly for Amazon the other day: "Head of Strategic Mobile App Partnerships", in Luxembourg, working on "a groundbreaking new mobile platform". More to come, I suspect. This certainly won't be confined to Verizon Wireless in the USA. 

I also wonder how long this will be an HTC exclusive. HTC could certainly use the help, but I'd expect all the Android OEMs to be interested: all of them except Samsung are struggling and they have no love for Google. But of course if all Android phones have this then they're back to selling commodities. 

And how does Google react? It has the power to withhold access to Google Apps (GMail, Google play, maps etc) for devices that fork Android, but additional preloaded services are hard to fit into that category. Moreover, how soon will Amazon be able to offer all of that functionality itself? Maps are probably the biggest hurdle - but now we have Nokia offering its own (equally good) maps in an iOS and HTML5 solution on all mobile devices...

What is Amazon's strategic objective? This isn't really about selling content and apps on mobile - even Apple makes no money doing that. Rather, as with the  Kindle Fire, Amazon is trying to create buying devices. Mobile devices sit next to Vogue and How To Spend It, and on the coffee table in front of the TV. They are ready and waiting for a call to action, to capture purchase intent. Amazon is a leveraged play on the conversion of physical retail to ecommerce, and mobile is the means of acquisition.