After taking on the tablet market last fall with its Kindle Fire, e-tailer Amazon now appears ready to try its hand at the lucrative smartphone market as well -- and a new report reveals it may already be working with component suppliers.
The Wall Street Journal is the latest to report that Amazon will be jumping into the smartphone arena with its own handset, and could already be testing just such a device with its component suppliers in Asia.
While Amazon remains mum on the possibility, unnamed officials with its part suppliers were a bit more loose-lipped, claiming "the Seattle-based company is testing a smartphone and mass production of the new device may start late this year or early next year."
A second source claims that the Amazon smartphone will have a display "between four and five inches," and most observers predict it could run a similar forked version of Android, much like the Kindle Fire tablet.
While rumors of an Amazon smartphone have percolated for months, Bloomberg reported last week that the company was further along than many suspected, with the e-tailer eyeing a release before the end of this year.
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