Former Senior Director of Windows Phone Business Development, Robert Williams is now a Director of App Store, for Amazon. Williams is the man responsible for Microsoft’s Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.
Well, this is not the first time that someone from top management of Microsoft has been hired by Amazon. Earlier this year, the e-commerce giant had hired Brandon Watson, Former Head of Windows Phone Developer Experience, as the Director of Kindle Cross Platform team. Wait, there’s more, late last year Charlie Kindel, the then General Manager of the Windows Phone Developer Ecosystem, left Microsoft after an astonishing 21 years with the company to start his own business.
These events, do give rise to the speculation that Amazon is secretly developing a smartphone under its brand. Or else, what could be the reason to hire employees with smartphone experience or recruit those who have played an important role building a smartphone product at a rival firm. The above statement could just be a rumour, as there is no evidence of either Watson or Williams, working on an Amazon smartphone. Remember, similar rumours of Amazon building a smartphone were making rounds, when the Kindle manufacturer was a contender in the race to buy out Palm & WebOS.
Though, at the same time it would be interesting to see how Amazon goes about its Android smartphone, considering the fact that it is on a war footing with Google which has recently released the Nexus 7 directly aimed at Amazon’s Kindle Fire. We would not be surprised to see an Amazon smartphone directly competing with the Nexus range of Google smartphones.
From Microsoft’s perspective things are not looking too bright, especially when Windows Phone 8 is on its way. If reports are to be believed, Windows Phone is being moved under Windows team, as both platforms share a base code. However, this could act as a deterrent for the Windows Phone OS. Also departure of three key people, who were working on the phone platform, in less than a year, kind of blurs the direction, in which it is headed.
