Recent activity at super-retailer Amazon could point to a greater involvement of the Jeff Bezos company in the mobile marketplace, in terms of both devices and applications for them.

Amazon has been on a hiring and spending spree, adding mobile expertise to its arsenal. The company has been hiring experienced mobile platform engineers and purchasing small companies with the expertise and technology needed to expand its mobile offerings. To the interested observer, it would appear that Amazon may have a couple of primary goals: the expansion of its Kindle technology to more and more mobile platforms, and the expansion of that technology into areas adjoining the central function of the Kindle.

Amazon can already provide the Kindle book reader software to iPhone users, and has done so a huge number of times via the Apple App Store, according to a Business Week article, as an example. Amazon is certainly planning to extend that software into additional markets, extending the reach of the product and expanding revenue of the ebooks that it sells for the Kindle. At the same time, it obviously has an interest in making it easier for mobile users to shop at Amazon, as witness the Blackberry application that lets users snap photos of products in brick and mortar stores and then find similar items on Amazon.

Thinking from a different angle, Amazon may be seeing a future in which buyers of applications for devices like smart phones and the Kindle may be able to shop at stores other than those of the device makers. Amazon is perfectly positioned for such a future marketplace, and would certainly love to be able to sell different versions of the same app to the users of different smartphones. That would certainly give the user more freedom to jump to a new platform and not lose his or her investment in apps.

The smartphone and wireless businesses are already in combination mode, with manufacturers pairing up with providers. That is obviously a system that inhibits the freedom of users at the expense of the big mobile players. Not that Bezos’ Amazon is a bit player or anti-monopoly, but perhaps the huge online retailer can inject a bit of laissez faire into what has become a very structured and consumer-unfriendly marketplace.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 5:37 pm under Amazon, Cell phones, Ecommerce, Internet.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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