Amazon Is Said to Look at Hardware Beyond Kindle

If you look at the job board for Lab 126, the division of Amazon responsible for the Kindle e-reader, you will see a flurry of listings related to electronics hardware, with titles like Supply Chain Project Program Manager, Hardware Engineer and RF Systems Engineer.

Some of the people hired for these positions will most likely work on the next versions of the Kindle, possibly integrating touch screens or even creating a color version of the device. But there’s also a good chance these engineers will be recruited to build other gadgets that Amazon is prototyping in its secret labs.

According to people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly about Amazon’s internal workings and unannounced products, Lab 126 has been looking into building other gadgets that it could sell to consumers.

One of those people said building more hardware products would be a means to an end. This person said Amazon wants to make more devices for consumers that would enable simple purchasing of Amazon content including its digital books, music and movie rentals and purchases.

The people who know of the company’s plans said Lab 126 was fostered inside Amazon with this goal in mind, but until recently the company has focused exclusively on the Kindle e-reading platform.

“Jeff’s original goal for the lab was to build a range of other devices,” said one person, referring to Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive. “There was talk of music players and other electronics.”

This person also said Lab 126 briefly discussed entering the mobile phone market to compete with Apple and Google, but the project “seemed out of Amazon’s reach.” But the person said Amazon had not definitively rejected the idea of building a phone in the future.

An Amazon representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It could be some time before these other prototyped gadgets reach the public, as there are nearly 80 job openings in the company’s hardware division and some positions are proving difficult to fill, these people said. They also said Amazon had actively weighed buying smaller companies. Last year it acquired Touchco, a multitouch hardware company.

Internally, Amazon executives have been frustrated with other companies aggressively entering the digital content business, and one person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said executives there were prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure Amazon remained a major player in the sale of digital content.

Earlier this year Apple introduced the iBookstore, which competes directly with the Kindle e-book platform. Google also plans to open its Google bookstore in the coming months and the company has been actively scanning millions of books that can be viewed on the Google Books Web site.

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