Disclosure: Brad Stone is author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. The book is published by Little, Brown & Co., a division of the Hachette Book Group, which is currently involved in a contract dispute with Amazon that is affecting the availability of The Everything Store and other Hachette books on the Amazon website.
On Wednesday, Amazon will release a smartphone. It’s a huge bet for the online retailer and, in the moment, a nice vindication for the product managers and hardware hackers at Lab126, Amazon’s secretive Silicon Valley hardware division.