Amazon’s Panos Panay addresses new Fire Phone rumors

Panos Panai, Amazon’s head of devices and services, says the company is “not necessarily” planning to launch a smartphone, but has stopped short of directly denying it. It was previously reported that Amazon is developing Alexa-enabled AI phone codenamed “Transformer” More than 10 years after the cancellation of the ill-fated Fire Phone.

talking to Financial TimesPanai was directly asked if the company is planning another smartphone. “That’s not the point,” he replied. “I know there are a lot of rumours.”

“I think your black-and-white question is: Are you going after a phone? A lot of people want me to say no, but a lot of people want me to say yes, I understand that. Here’s my point: We’re not necessarily going after the phone, no.”

“It’s a difficult question,” he added. “If I said no in black and white, I would say that was accurate. But I also think it’s misleading.”

Much of Panai’s long answer to that question is based on changes to the smartphone form factor, which he says is “not going anywhere,” but is “going through some transformation, and will continue to do so over the next 10 years.” His hedges could suggest that whatever Amazon is working on won’t be a phone as we know it. Little is known about the reported Transformer project, except that the team has explored smartphone and “smartphone” designs, and that Amazon’s Alexa Plus AI assistant will be central to the device.

Speaking about AI wearables, Panai said, “There’s a whole new set of form factors that we’re working on,” so perhaps the company’s phone plans fall into that. But then it seems Amazon’s bad experiences with Fire Phoneand Panay’s own launch of dihedral While he is at Microsoft, he is in no hurry to release a simple smartphone again.