Amazon's head of devices and services, Panos Panay, has deployed a masterclass in corporate linguistic gymnastics, telling the Financial Times that the company is "not necessarily" planning a new smartphone - while carefully avoiding a flat denial. This comes over a decade after Amazon's Fire Phone famously fizzled harder than a wet sparkler, and follows reports that the company is developing an Alexa-enabled AI phone codenamed "Transformer."
When asked directly if Amazon is planning another smartphone, Panay replied: "It's just not the goal. I know there's a lot of rumors out there." He then proceeded to explain why saying "no" would be both accurate and misleading, because apparently in Amazon's world, facts can be Schrödinger's cat. "It's a tricky question," he added, in what may be the understatement of the decade.
Panay's verbal tap-dance hinges on his belief that the smartphone form factor is "going through some transformation" over the next 10 years - suggesting whatever Amazon is cooking up might not look like a phone as we know it. The rumored Transformer project has been exploring both smartphone and "dumbphone" designs, with Amazon's Alexa Plus AI assistant as the centerpiece. Panay also mentioned working on "a whole new set of form factors" for AI wearables, which could include whatever phone-like object Amazon is definitely-not-not-working-on. Given Amazon's Fire Phone trauma and Panay's own experience launching the Surface Duo at Microsoft, it's understandable he's not rushing to repeat history.