Amazon.com Inc. has finally launched its own smartphone, the Fire, that at its core is a hub for all things Amazon.

Fire is the latest addition to the e-commerce behemoth’s deep arsenal of products and services and brings together many of those wide-ranging interests in one compact device. It’s a way to tie consumers to the company by making the phone a one-stop shop for buying products on Amazon, listening to songs on Amazon Music, watching shows via Prime Instant Video, and purchasing and reading Kindle e-books.

“There’s a logic to it,” said Mike Levin, a partner at Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. “They used to be basically an online retailer. And now they’ve created a much more integrated set of products and services that meets people’s needs for more than just buying goods.”

In unveiling the phone, which had been rumored for years, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said the Fire “puts everything you love about Amazon in the palm of your hand – instant access to Amazon’s vast content ecosystem and exclusive features.”

The smartphone costs $200 for a 32-gigabyte version and $300 for a 64 GB version, both with a two-year contract – higher than expected given Amazon’s history of pricing its hardware relatively cheap. AT&T will be the only carrier for the phone, which will be released July 25.

Speaking to a crowd of media representatives and consumers at a launch event in Seattle on Wednesday, Bezos said the company put a “huge effort” into perfecting the phone’s design. Available in black, it closely resembles the look of the Apple iPhone 5S. It boasts a 4.7-inch HD display, 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and five front-facing cameras.

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Amazon faces a major battle to capture the attention of consumers, who have overwhelmingly settled on Apple or Samsung phones and have spent years downloading apps and personalizing their devices.

“It’s a really tough space,” said Julie Ask, an analyst at Forrester Research. “But the prize is also really big. There’s no doubt mobile phones are becoming the primary engagement point for consumers.”

The odds of a third player breaking through, as Microsoft has learned with its Windows Phones, are long even for companies with deep pockets. The once-ubiquitous BlackBerry all but disappeared during the past few years.

According to ComScore, 167.9 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months that ended in April. Apple was the No. 1 smartphone maker, with 41.4 percent of the market. Samsung followed with 27.7 percent. LG, Motorola and HTC rounded out the top five, each with market share in the single digits.

Colin Gillis, a technology analyst at BGC Financial, said the Fire doesn’t really offer anything radically new in terms of pricing or contracts that would entice customers to toss aside iPhones or Galaxies they have owned for years. He said Amazon would be lucky to sell 5 million this year, compared with the 37 million iPhones Apple sold in its most recent quarter.

Still, some analysts argued that the number of phones sold may be the wrong way to evaluate Amazon’s efforts.

“I wouldn’t define their success by volume,” Ask said. “There’s a lot to be gained for Amazon by what they’re going to learn from this, and what they’ve already learned. And the phone stays close to their core business, which is media and retail. They’re playing to their strengths.”

Indeed, the Fire smartphone contains several media and shopping features that Amazon hopes will differentiate it from the rest of the pack.


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