Amazon is stepping into unknown territory, first by launching its tablet computer and now it's planning to spread its wings in the smartphone business. Where it sure will face a cutthroat competition from the reigning smartphone manufacturers.

The online retailer in collaboration with Asian component suppliers is working to test a smartphone, which the company might release towards the end of this year or early 2013. The salient features of the phone according to one person may be between four to five inches, however a spokesman from Amazon declined to comment on this.

Also, Amazon is working toward improving the gaming experience on Kindle Fire. It introduced GameCircle on Wednesday, which is a backend game service on the lines of Apple's GameCenter. With these services, developers can implement desirable game features like achievements and leaderboards. Through in-app payments, the control and authority of the service providers like Apple and Amazon is very much guaranteed.

For people playing Kindle Fire games with GameCircle, they can access the services through their Amazon accounts similar to iOS games with GameCenter using their Apple IDs. The three distinct services provided by GameCircle are- achievements, sync and leaderboards. Leaderboards help players to compete against others or their own past performances, achievements are in the form of trophies, virtual badges in order to sustain player engagement. Sync saves the players games to Amazon cloud.