Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) Moves Back To 2-Month Highs

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) Moves Back To 2-Month Highs

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) shares declined 0.27% to $228.69 in the morning hour. The company has reportedly agreed to buy mapping startup UpNext, the latest sign of enlarged competition between the world’s largest tech rivals such as Google and Apple.
UpNext Founders Raj Advani, Vik Advani, Robin Har and Danny Moon is said to move from New York to Seattle, where Amazon is based, to lead the company’s mapping efforts, as told by GigaOM.

However, the purchase price for the technology news service was nor reported, but UpNext backers, including Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, is expected to get a five-fold return on their investment, made about 16 months ago.

Maps have become an area of extreme competition amid some of the largest technology companies in recent months. Apple is replacing Google Maps, a pre-loaded app on the iPhone and iPad, with its own in-house map service, delivering a blow to Google, which receives around half its map traffic from Apple devices.

Aaron Kessler, an Internet analyst at Raymond James, said that Amazon may also be buying UpNext to help its push into mobile devices, including a possible smartphone.

GigaOM also said that the current Kindle Fire tablet does not have a global positioning system receiver and users have to download third-party Android mapping apps or access online mapping services through Amazon’s Silk Internet browser.

The 52 week trading range for the company is $166.97 – $246.71. The shares of the company gained around 8% in the last one year. Moreover, the company expects to report second quarter of 2012 net sales to be between $11.9 billion and $13.3 billion and operating income (loss) to be between $(260) million and $40 million. Analysts on an average were expecting the company to report revenue of $12.8 billion and operating profit of $142 million for the second quarter of 2012.