http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and ... 2--1041954

Wouldn't surprise me, but I'd expect it a good bit later tbh. And would it really be wise to jump into something new when you're losing something like £6 upfront on every Fire sold?

So how long before Apple sues them for something?
It's what Apple do.

The Kindle Fire is a cheap media consumption device, it isn't being sold as a full tablet - which seems to confuse people who are saying it isn't an iPad killer; it kills the iPad, when it comes to seemlessly playing Amazon streaming content and ordering content direct from Amazon, but it isn't supposed to be a general purpose tablet - probably why it is being sold as the "Kindle Fire" and not the "Kindle Fire tablet"...

It kills the iPad accessing Amazon steaming stuff (most of which isn't available in the EU anyway), a lot of the reviews I've read suggest it's not a whole lot of use for anything else. Or at least, no better that the competition and they haven't exactly set the world alight. There will be an iPad killer at some point, but one good gimmick isn't going to make that. It will have to be a tablet that does everything the iPad does, doing most of them as well or better than the iPad , with some other USP as well. And a USP that people actually want, rather than one the tech fraternity think is 'cool'.

IMO, a large number of people giving Fires as gifts this christmas would do just as well to give standard Kindles and save themselves $100 into the bargain.

The general consensus is it's being sold for a slight loss (estimates suggest the cost-to-retail is somewhere between $220 and $250). Even if you decide to make a smartphone and sell it for a small loss, you're still going to be asking between $350 and $400. Smartphones are not cheap things to make. At least not if you don't want it to be rubbish. And you can't ask 350-400 for something that isn't as good as the competition at a lot of things they do at the same price, because you're going to fail if you do. If there is an Amazon phone, it'll either have to be a premium device or have to be sold subsidised through carriers, in which case it will feel like just another 'me too' Android phone (running a very old version of the OS at that given we now have ICS in the wild), which isn't exactly a recipe for acclaim and success.

Jon