Amazon’s endgame may be emerging

Amazon.com — the founder of modern e-commerce — is reportedly about to jump into the smartphone game. And now, the enigma that is Amazon suddenly begins to make a bit more sense.

Two handsets — one a value model and another with 3-D viewing capabilities — are said to be in development, along with a possible set-top box, according to several recent reports. The e-retailer’s deeper dive into the hardware den provides at least some glimpse into the cagey company and its mysterious endgame.

If an Amazon smartphone can come close to the innovation of Apple, Motorola, Nokia or Samsung, those companies should be afraid. It’s impossible to compete with a company that has permission from its shareholders to lose money, as Amazon does.

For years, Amazon has been the only publicly traded company in the world whose investors don’t care about profits. They simply don’t make money. And sometimes they lose money. They still continue to expand, invest and cut prices.

“Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers,” wrote economics blogger Matt Yglesias early this year.

To be sure, Amazon’s sales are through the roof. The prices seem impossibly low because, well, it is impossible to make money at Amazon prices. The home-delivery giant has been willing to eat the cost of becoming a staple in the daily diet of consumers. The question is: To what end?

We all know that Amazon wants you to buy all your goods from Amazon. Now it’s becoming clearer that Amazon wants to provide the mechanisms you use to purchase those goods as well. And that opens up a world of new possibilities for them.

One of Amazon’s smartphone prototypes reportedly includes up to four cameras for the purpose of scanning retail items. Fancy those new shoes your colleague has on today? Take a picture of them, and Amazon will determine your location and deliver them in, say, two hours. That could be the future. For all the talk of mobile commerce, no one has taken it to the next level of instant consumer gratification.

Investors have trusted that Amazon is working on something big-picture. Even as Amazon has flubbed every measure on Wall Street — operating margins, free cash flow, net profit — stock prices have inexplicably risen. Now we may know why.