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Amazon may launch its own mobile phone wireless service
REUTERS/Abhishek N. Chinnappa
Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of Amazon, poses as he stands atop a supply truck during a photo opportunity at the premises of a shopping mall in the southern Indian city of Bangalore September 28, 2014.
Amazon may be planning to launch its own wireless service to offer customers low-cost mobile internet.
This is the prediction made by Macquarie Research, and comes a day after Google announced its own long-rumoured wireless service.
Google’s wireless service is what’s known as a MVNO — a mobile virtual network operator. It doesn’t own its own bandwidth or transmitter, but instead rents them from other carriers. Macquarie believes Amazon is now “likely to follow suit” with the MVNO model.
It’d be a “bullish” move for Amazon to make, the analyst note says, and it could come bundled with Prime to make Amazon’s premium subscription service even more all-encompassing.
Amazon has made previous forays into the mobile sphere. It launched the Amazon Fire Phone in 2014 (but it was not particularly well-received). Back in 2012 it actually ran an MVNO in Japan, offering prepaid wireless service in the country. It also offers free downloads worldwide for Kindles, GigaOm pointed out at the time, meaning that it effectively operates a (unconventional) MVNO worldwide already.
In short, Amazon already has plenty of experience in mobile under its belt. And in January 2015, VentureBeat also reported that there’s “chatter within the wireless industry about Amazon becoming a network operator.”
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.
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