Amazon working on a new (Alexa) phone

I thought this was worth noting for posterity: Amazon's apparently working on a new smartphone. Yes. Years after the Firephone excitement, The Verge is reporting that the company is working away on a phone.

Over ten years after shelving the Fire Phone, Amazon is reportedly planning to launch another smartphone, this time focused on Alexa. According to Reuters, the phone, which is code-named “Transformer,” will center around Amazon’s AI assistant, but Alexa won’t “necessarily be the primary operating system of the phone.”

Essentially everything is sketchy - but it would be interesting if Amazon was to re-enter the smartphone/smart-device-in-your-pocket marketplace. It's a very different world than decades ago where everything was about the app ecosystem.

You might argue we're on the cusp of the next phase – especially if Alexa+ can offer a level beyond the traditional tapping of apps. We shall see.

Come on Amazon! We need some good thinking and some good competition for this new phase we're entering...