American online retail giant, Amazon is believed to be working on a new smartphone offering, which is dubbed, the 'Kindle Phone'.

According to new media reports, the smartphone might feature holographic display with a retina-tracker allowing users to see three-dimensional images without the need for special glasses. Experts have said that an entry into the smartphone market is a natural next step for the company after the Kindle Fire line of tablets proved to a worth competitor to Apple iPads.

American online retail giant, Amazon has announced the launch of its popular Appstore for Android in the massive Chinese telecom market in order to attract more users in the country.

With the launch of the Appstore, Amazon has become the first US firm to allow Chinese users to download both free and paid apps in the country. The company is expanding its presence in China and some reports suggested that it surpassed Google in paid apps for local customers. Google Play store is currently only offering free apps in China.

US online giant, Amazon has said that its profits have fallen by a disappointing 37 per cent during the quarter from January to March, 2013.

The company said that its net income fell to $82 million or 18 cents a share during the first quarter of the year compared to from $130 million or 28 cents a share recorded in the same quarter of the previous year. The total revenues of the company increased 22 per cent to $16.07 billion during the three month period from $13.18 billion recorded in January to March quarter of 2012.

Moscow, April 19 :The world's biggest online retailer Amazon is opening a representative office in Russia, Forbes magazine said Friday.

Amazon's move comes just two days after the e-commerce giant announced its strategy to extend its app distribution business, Android-based Appstore, to nearly 200 countries.

Russia is currently Europe's largest internet market with an online audience of 61.3 million, according to a recent study by comScore.

Amazon's Russia office will be headed by Arkady Vitruk, former general director of Azbuka-Atticus publisher owned by media tycoon Alexander Mamut, Forbes said.

American online retail giant, Amazon has said that it will launch its popular Appstore for Android in the 200 markets including the Indian market soon.

The company will launch its app store in several markets including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, and South Korea. The company said that the app store will be launched in the coming months but the company said that developers can begin submitting their apps for distribution in the new markets.

Global online giant, EBay has said that it is planning to reduce its seller fees and also make them simpler for the users to understand.

Ebay might be looking compete better with giant online retailer Amazon. com. The company said that it will replace its complicated tiered pricing mechanism and will introduce simple flat-rate fees based on the types of products being sold on the site. The company has also indicated that it will no longer charge listing fees for most sellers on its site.

London, Mar 7 : Google is developing a service called Shopping Express, which arranges for local shops to sell products online and have them delivered at the customer''s address on the same day.

The move has been identified as the web giant''s entry into the territory occupied by the world''s largest online retailer Amazon, who also offers same-day deliveries, the Telegraph reports.

Amazon. com, the world's most popular online retail giant, has urged the Indian government to relax its e-commerce law.

Paul Misener, global vice president of the American e-commerce giant, on Tuesday held a meeting with Indian Trade Minister Anand Sharma in New Delhi, and urged him to consider relaxing an e-commerce law that currently forbids its Indian subsidiary from selling products directly to customers. Amazon operates in India via its subsidiary Junglee. com.

Announcing yet another discount on its 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD tablet, online retail biggie Amazon has recently revealed that it is cutting $30 from the cost of the Wi-Fi model of the tablet, and $50 from the 4G LTE version's price-tag.

The markdown being offered by Amazon on the price of 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD implies that the Wi-Fi version of the tablet will now cost $269 instead of $299; while the 4G LTE model will come down from $499 to $449.

The home page of Seattle-based bigwig online retailer Amazon witnessed an outage for nearly 50 minutes on Thursday, with the result that customers had difficulties in connecting to the retailer's main Web address, www. amazon. com.

Washington, Jan 21 :  An Amazon rainforest area twice the size of California has been hit hard by a megadrought that began in 2005 and caused widespread damage to the canopy that blankets the dense vegetation, says a new NASA-led study.

Scientists found that during the summer of 2005, more than 700,000 sq km, or 70 million hectares of pristine, old-growth forest in southwestern Amazonia experienced an extensive, severe drought.

This megadrought caused widespread changes to the forest canopy that were detectable by satellite.

Online retail giant Amazon's aggressive move to launch an HTML5 browser-based MP3 store that has been optimized for the iPhone and iPod Touch will give the users the ability to conveniently purchase songs through their mobile Safari browser.

The accessibility of Amazon's web-based store for the Amazon Music Store from an iOS device is clearly a win-win situation for the Web giant, even though the store will comparatively much less user-friendly than the iTunes Music Store and the iOS music player.

American online retail giant, Amazon has announced the launch of a new service under which it will offer free digital versions of the CDs that are purchased by the customers through its store.

The company launched the new AutoRip service that will automatically store the digital copies of the CDs in a cloud based account of the customer. The customers will be able to access the stored content through Amazon's Cloud Player on the internet net on their tablet or smartphone using apps.

British Prime Minister, David Cameron has said raised moral questions on the behaviors of some of the multinational firms which were recently found to have paid very little or no tax at all in the country.

He said in an attacking mode that the government will work to make sure that they pay their full share of corporate taxes in the future. The remarks came after lawmakers in the country said that firms like Starbucks, Google and Amazon are behaving immorally to twist the system and avid their due share of taxes in the UK.

In a Monday post, Amazon Web Services (AWS) extended an apology for its Christmas Eve service outage which caused disruptions to client Netflix's video service for several users in the US, Canada and Latin America.

In a notable attempt to brighten up the somewhat unexciting black-and-white e-readers, Amazon and Barnes & Noble (B&N) have made a `lighting systems' addition to the new editions of their respective e-readers, Kindle Paperwhite and Nook Simple Touch.

Under a new agreement between the government of Massachusetts and Amazon. com, the online retailing giant will start collecting sales tax from residents of the state.

The agreement, which comes after several months of negotiations between the government and the company, will come into effect from 1 November, 2013. The agreement will now require the state's around 6.6 million residents to pay sales tax on their online purchases. Amazon will start collecting the state's 6.25-percent tax on Nov. 1, 2013 on all online purchases made in the state.

A committee of MPs in the UK has criticized Amazon, Google and Starbucks, all US based firms, for indulging in tax avoidance activities in the UK.

The lawmakers said that the companies used secretive jurisdictions, royalties and complex company structures in order to avoid paying taxes in the UK. The Commons public accounts committee released a highly critical report on Monday accusing the companies of tax avoidance through various measures.

On Monday, US consumer electronic bigwig Amazon announced the availability of its digital Kindle Paperwhite reader in Japan; a market in which the Amazon device will take on rivals like e-commerce firm Rakuten's Kobo e-reader.

Amazon said in an announcement that the shipping of the Kindle Paperwhite units to Japanese customers who had pre-ordered the device through the Amazon Web page began on Monday; while some of the country's leading department stores will start selling the e-reader from Tuesday onwards.

Online retailer giant Amazon has kicked off its Black Friday Deals Week 2012 in the UK, as a result of which the company will offer new deals every 15 minutes all through the day, till Sunday, November 25.