Amazon Will Rearrange The Smartphone Landscape This Week With Its New Phone
Amazon is expected to introduce a new product on Wednesday, and most people think it will be a long-awaited Amazon smartphone. The phone is expected to have the ability to display 3D images. And it has a set of front-facing cameras that can track your movements (so you can use the phone without touching it). But the phone's expected technical specs are not as important as the place people expect the phone to occupy in the online e-commerce environment. Amazon realizes that people are using their phones for shopping more and more. With no phone, Amazon's app is at the mercy of Google (Android) and Apple (iPhone). Amazon can incentivize people to use its phone by offering them deals via Amazon, and the phone will keep them within the Amazon ecosystem.
In theory, an Amazon phone platform could rearrange the Apple/Android landscape, assuming it gains enough users. There hasn't been a decent level of three-way competition in the phone market for years, and that's because ...
BlackBerry: As if to underline just how volatile the smartphone market can be, struggling BlackBerry will report earnings this week too. It will be bad: BlackBerry, which one dominated mobile phones in the early 2000s, is expected to report revenues of just under $1 billion - in the same period last year it had revenues of just over $3 billion. The Globe and Mail reports that the company is basically abandoning phones as its main platform and trying to build and "internet of things" platform. Blackberry's global smartphone market share is ~1%.
Also happening this week:
Adobe reports earnings on June 17.
Amazon will unveil a new product on June 18.
BlackBerry reports earnings June 18.
Oracle reports earnings June 18.
Red Hat reports earnings on June 18.