Amazon exec interview casts doubt on new Fire Phone rumors

Back in the early 2010s, the smartphone industry was positively exploding, and brands everywhere were looking to get in on the action for themselves. HTC was building “Facebook phones” with dedicated buttons for the social media giant, and even Amazon attempted its own Fire Phone. While that quickly proved to be a high-profile disaster, earlier this year we started hearing rumblings that Amazon was thinking about a do-over, and working on a new smartphone project. But now, in a new interview, Amazon’s head of devices and services throws some cold water on those rumors.

At the very least, Panos Panay’s interview with The Financial Times complicates that narrative significantly. In a conversation with the outlet’s Rafe Rosner-Uddin, Panay discusses everything from Amazon’s satellite ambitions to self-driving robotaxis. At one point, that turns to Amazon’s ability to control the hardware users access its connected ecosystem through, and while the company has things covered in the home with the likes of Echo devices, phones still represent an obvious gap.

Panay points out that even without direct ownership over this hardware, Amazon’s still been very successful at getting millions upon millions users to run its apps on their iPhones and Androids handsets. But when pushed on the possibility of Amazon returning to the smartphone game itself, Panay deflects:

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 get it. Here’s my take: it’s not necessarily [that] we’re going after a phone, no.

That’s a bit less than satisfying, but also a response that makes a lot of sense in light of the broader context. Panay is upfront in stating that Amazon making a new phone is not the goal in and of itself. If an Amazon phone would clearly help the company achieve its larger goals in terms of the connected home and the company’s retail efforts, it sounds like this is a direction it’s open to considering — but also not one that’s pursued as an end goal.

Panay also alludes to the changing shape of devices, and how phones as we know them today may look quite different 10 years down the line — if those are even our primary devices any longer.

There’s no clear path that makes sense. You just said it, there’s so many new form factors that are important that need to be focused on. It’s a tricky question. If I black and white say no, I would say that was accurate. But I also think it’s misleading.

Does that mean the next Amazon “phone” might be something like smart glasses, instead? More than anything, it sounds like Amazon wants to keep its options open, and isn’t in a rush to repeat past mistakes of giving shoppers a mobile device they never really asked for:

What I won’t ever do again is [go to the customer and say] here’s another phone. What do you think? There’s no point.

Would you be interested in giving Amazon another chance at making a phone? Or should the company stop thinking about mobile hardware altogether and focus on the smart home? Let us know down in the comments.