{"id":549841,"date":"2026-03-20T21:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T21:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/549841\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T21:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T21:43:08","slug":"amazon-is-reportedly-developing-an-ai-centric-smartphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/549841\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon is reportedly developing an AI-centric smartphone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AI integration is a \u201ckey focus\u201d of Transformer, per Reuters\u2019 sources, who said that Amazon wants the phone to drive usage of Amazon\u2019s AI products. The phone may use AI in lieu of app stores, the sources said, similar to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelightphone.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Light Phone<\/a>, which the Transfomer development team is taking \u201cinspiration\u201d from, Reuters said, citing two of its sources.<\/p>\n<p>Reuters\u2019 report doesn\u2019t explicitly mention \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2026\/01\/amazon-alexa-released-to-the-general-public-via-an-early-access-website\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alexa+<\/a>,\u201d the generative AI version of Alexa, but the subscription-based assistant would likely be central to Transformers\u2019 reported goals.<\/p>\n<p>Fire Phone, take two<\/p>\n<p>Amazon\u2019s reported attempts to develop a new smartphone come at an interesting time. It\u2019s been about 11 years since Amazon killed the FireOS-based <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2014\/07\/review-amazons-fire-phone-offers-new-gimmicks-old-platform-growing-pains\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fire Phone<\/a>, which sold for only about a year before it was discontinued due to <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2014\/10\/23\/amazon-fire-phone-flops\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">poor sales<\/a>. Meanwhile, Amazon\u2019s devices division has reportedly <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2024\/07\/alexa-had-no-profit-timeline-cost-amazon-25-billion-in-4-years\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">struggled financially for years<\/a>, largely because Alexa-based devices <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2022\/11\/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">have failed to generate revenue<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A return to smartphones would pit Amazon against Apple and Samsung, which dominate the market and bring years of app ecosystems, hardware innovation, AI development, and loyal fanbases.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s unclear why Amazon thinks now is a good time to get back into phones. Even potentially low prices may not be enough to convince people to buy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI integration is a \u201ckey focus\u201d of Transformer, per Reuters\u2019 sources, who said that Amazon wants the phone&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-549841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}