[UPDATE: It seems the Amazon smartphone hasn’t been anything for retailers to worry about as it’s flopped.]

Amazon has announced its first smartphone and it’s got some retailers worried.

And that’s all because of its main attraction the Firefly app.

Firefly is

“an object-recognition technology that lets you snap a picture of virtually anything (or listen in on a song or television show) and buy it from Amazon immediately. The company says it can recognize 100 million different objects. Its goal is no less audacious than to simply turn your entire life, online or out in the real world, into a never-ending stream of opportunities to sell you something.” –Will Amazon’s Fire Phone kill mom and pop stores for good?

Firefly makes showrooming frictionless thanks to the physical button Amazon has included on the phone.

The Amazon Smartphone Live Blog

However, Amazon haven’t quite gone in for the kill

and that’s because Amazon’s phone pricing actually is not disruptive at all.

“The Amazon phone, unveiled today, will cost about the same as most other good smartphones: $199 or $299 with a two-year contract and $649 or $749 unlocked, depending on storage capacity. And its exclusive US carrier partner AT&T isn’t offering anything special, either. (No word yet on international carriers.)”

If they really wanted to shake up both the phone market and dominate showrooming further then surely Amazon would have released the phone to undercut the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy? Bezos would then make money back from the increase in ecommerce sales through showrooming.

“I don’t think the phone is exciting enough to attract early adopters and not priced low enough to get the late adopters either.” Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester analyst

3 Potentially Disruptive Aspects of the Amazon Fire Phone

For the comments…

Do you think the Firefly app will change retail? Are you worried about the announcement of Amazon’s Fire Phone?

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