Amazon’s Fire smartphone, introduced on June, 18, will likely be most popular with Amazon customers who want to use the device’s features to make it easier to order products from online retail giant, according to mobile industry analysts.
Jan Dawson, principal analyst with Jackdaw Research, explained that Amazon’s mobile market strategy isn’t to compete with the major smartphone brands, but to give its most loyal users another way to purchase things through their Website. For example, the phone’s Dynamic Perspective and Firefly features are designed to make it easy to capture information about anything they see in their environment and use that data to purchase one of the millions of products on Amazon’s Website. The phone also features the Mayday service that Amazon introduced with the Kindle Fire HDX, which easily connects users to 24/7 customer service.
T-Mobile is following up on its Un-carrier 5.0 Test Drive offer with a 6.0 announcement that offers unlimited streaming music. T-Mobile subscribers who have Simple Choice plans can now listen to music streaming from Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker and Spotify without impacting their high-speed data allowances.
Many Americans have voiced frustrations over their cable providers. However, according to a recent report from the Federal Communications Commission, one thing people can’t claim their providers do is give them slow Internet.
The FCC recruited 10,000 volunteers to install what the agency referred to as off-the-shelf routers with additional monitoring software. They discovered that most of the big ISPs deliver at least the performance they advertise and some deliver service that is as much as 120 percent faster than their advertised download speeds. However, the FCC added that their testing had revealed serious network congestion at interchange points.
Facebook recently announced the progress that is being made on some of the new projects the company is working on. First, officials announced the launch of an open-source switch called Wedge that it has developed as part of its Open Compute Project. Also, the company says it’s moving right along on its plans to use drone aircrafts to provide Internet connectivity to rural areas of the world.