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NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon, a company of seemingly boundless ambition, appears to be venturing into yet another market: smartphones.

The corporate juggernaut that started out with books and soon moved into music, video, cloud computing and Kindle e-readers is hosting a launch event Wednesday in Seattle, and media reports indicate the product will be an Amazon phone — perhaps one with multiple cameras that can produce 3-D photos.

Amazon declined to comment, but analysts said the goal is almost certainly a device designed to get customers to buy more things from Amazon. It might include an Amazon shopping app or other features tied in tightly to the products the company sells.

"It's Amazon. That says to me the core value proposition is going to be about shopping," said Ramon Llamas of the research firm International Data Corp.

Amazon's phone comes at a time when the nation's largest e-commerce company is at a crossroads.

Its stock, which surged for years despite narrow profits, has dropped 18 percent in 2014 to about $326, in part because investors have been losing patience with its habit of plowing revenue back into new ventures.

Analysts said the move into smartphones is a bit of a head-scratcher, since the company is a late entrant into the highly competitive market.

For all its success with other products, Amazon will be hard-pressed to compete with Samsung and Apple, the No. 1 and 2 mobile phone companies in the world.

Globally, Samsung led mobile phone manufacturers with 31 percent of the 288 million units shipped in the first quarter, followed by Apple at 15 percent. In the U.S., Apple dominates with more than 37 percent of the 34 million units shipped, with Samsung at close to 29 percent.

Some analysts have speculated that the 3-D feature might tie into an Amazon shopping app. Shoppers might be able to use the phone to take a 3-D picture of a product in a store, then search for the object on Amazon and buy it online.

Analysts said the phone could also come with a data plan that could let owners use Amazon services without using up any data.

"Anything that generates more repeat orders and more frequent purchases is probably part of what they intend to do with this," said R.W. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian.

To compete, Amazon needs more than an expected 3-D viewing feature, which has been tried before by smartphone makers like HTC and LG, Llamas said.

Competing on price won't help if it leaves people with the impression that the device is cheaply built, and getting customers to buy a phone without being about to touch it first could prove difficult, he said.

"If they sell it only online, as Amazon sells many of its goods and products, that could be a challenge," Llamas said.

Here's a look at the impact Amazon has had in music, video and other markets it has entered:

BOOKS

Amazon.com Inc. started as an online bookstore in 1995 in CEO Jeff Bezos' garage in Bellevue, Washington. As more and more bookstores have closed, Amazon is now believed to be the nation's largest bookseller, with an estimated 30 percent of a total book market that PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates hit $34.9 billion last year, and 60 percent of an e-book market that PwC pegged at $7.9 billion.

Mike Shatzkin, founder and CEO of book industry consultancy The Idea Logical Co., said book publishers view Amazon with "a mixture of dependence and fear."

"They can't live without Amazon's sales, and they can't live with Amazon's market power," he said.

MUSIC

Amazon is a major player in music. It has sold compact discs by mail since 1998 and digital downloads since 2007.

Russ Crupnick, managing partner of consulting company MusicWatch, pegs Amazon's share at 18 percent of the $2.8 billion digital download market in the U.S. last year and 23 percent of the $2.1 billion market for CDs. In comparison, Apple's iTunes commands about 67 percent of digital downloads and doesn't sell CDs. Amazon is the only competitor to Apple of any real size.

Amazon last week launched a music streaming service that makes more than 1 million tracks available to members of its $99-a-year Amazon Prime subscription plan.

TABLETS

Amazon took over the e-book market soon after its first Kindle was launched in 2007. It took a big step by introducing its full-color Kindle Fire tablet in 2011, with a price starting at $199 and a screen just 7 inches diagonally.

"At the time, none of the other vendors had something similar," said Jitesh Ubrani, an IDC analyst.

But since then, others have matched the size and price, especially Samsung, which has made big gains. Amazon's share of global shipments has slid from more than 7 percent in 2012 to 2 percent in the first quarter of the year.

"Other vendors have cheaper, better products," Ubrani said.

MOVIES AND TV SHOWS

Amazon is a large retailer of DVDs and Blu-ray discs and also offers online rentals and purchases of digital video products.

Amazon has 15 percent of the $1.8 billion U.S. market for movie and TV show rentals and downloads, trailing Apple's 58 percent, according to Dan Cryan, an analyst with market research firm IHS.

As for subscription video streaming, Cryan estimates Amazon accounted for 15 percent of the 43.6 million active U.S. subscribers of streaming video plans through its Prime Instant Video service. Netflix accounted for 73 percent of active streaming subscribers, while Hulu Plus had 12 percent.

CLOUD SERVICES

Amazon essentially created the marketplace for what is known as cloud infrastructure as a service in 2006 with Amazon Web Services. That is where it allows its servers to be used by third parties to host the data and applications they need to run mobile apps, websites and other services.

As the overwhelming market leader, Amazon maintains five times the computing capacity of the next 14 service providers combined, according to Gartner analyst Lydia Leong. Amazon is aggressive with price cuts and innovation, which will probably keep competitors like Microsoft from catching up for years, Leong said.

OVERALL RETAIL

Amazon sold $40.8 billion worth of goods in North America last year. That's 17 percent of all e-commerce, according to Anne Zybowski, vice president of retail insights at research firm Kantar Retail.

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Online:

Amazon's teaser video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=erUZQ9GK0sE

Nakashima reported on this story from Los Angeles.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine on Monday after negotiators failed to reach a deal on Ukraine's unpaid gas bills and future gas prices amid deep tensions between the two neighbors over eastern Ukraine.

The decision provoked strong words from both sides but does not immediately affect the crucial flow of Russian gas to Europe. Ukraine itself has enough reserves to last until December, according to the chief of Ukraine's state gas company Naftogaz.

Still, the Russian move could disrupt Europe's long-term energy supplies if the issue is not resolved, analysts said. Previous gas disputes left Ukraine and some Balkan nations shivering for nearly two weeks in the dead of winter.

The gas conflict is part of a wider dispute over whether Ukraine aligns itself with Russia or with the 28-nation European Union. It comes in the midst of a crisis in relations following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March. Ukraine accuses Russia of supporting an armed separatist insurgency in its eastern regions, which Russia denies.

Ukraine, one of the most energy inefficient countries in Europe, has been chronically behind on payments for the Russian natural gas needed to heat its homes and fuel its industries. In addition, Russia had been giving its neighbor cut-rate sweetheart deals on gas for various political reasons, a practice that came to a halt April 1.

Russia had demanded a payment of $1.95 billion by Monday for past-due bills. At talks over the weekend in Kiev, Ukraine was ready to accept a compromise of paying $1 billion now and more later, but Russia didn't accept the offer, the European Commission said.

Sergei Kupriyanov, spokesman for the Russian gas giant Gazprom, said since Ukraine missed the deadline, from now on it had to pay in advance. Yet that's a nearly impossible demand for the cash-strapped nation, which is fighting an insurgency and investigating possibly billions lost to corruption under its former pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Europe gets about 30 percent of its gas from Russia, and about half of that goes through the pipelines across Ukraine. In 2013, Ukraine imported nearly 26 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia, just over half of its annual consumption.

Kupriyanov said Russian gas supplies for Europe will continue as planned and warned Ukraine to make sure they reach European customers.

Analyst Tim Ash at Standard Bank PLC said Ukraine could in theory simply take what it wants, since gas in the pipeline is intermingled. That would result in a shortage in gas to Europe that could hinder the buildup of stored gas ahead of the critical winter heating season.

"This is unlikely to bring a short-term hit to gas supply in Europe, but it will build up problems for the winter unless a deal is reached quickly," he said in an email.

Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary get 80 percent or more of their gas from Russia, while Poland, Austria and Slovenia get around 60 percent.

At a news conference in Moscow, Alexei Miller, the CEO of Gazprom, berated the Ukrainian government, saying it scoffed at compromise and was deliberately turning commercial negotiations into a political discourse.

"Ukraine will get as much gas as it pays for," Miller said Monday. "The risks to the (gas) transit are there and they're significant."

He said in order to prevent serious disruptions to supplies in winter, Ukraine needs to pump in gas to its underground storages before mid-October. The current amount of gas in storage is not enough for Europe to last through the winter, he said.

In Kiev, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk angrily rejected the Russian position, putting Gazprom's move on par with the annexation of Crimea and the pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

"We won't subsidize Gazprom," he said. "Ukrainians will not take $5 billion per year (out of their pockets) to let Russia spend this money on weapons, tanks and planes to bomb Ukrainian territory."

Gazprom had tolerated the late payments but now says Ukraine owes a total of $4.458 billion for gas from last year and this year.

In December, Russia offered Yanukovych a discounted price of $268.50 per thousand cubic meters after he backed out of an economic and political agreement with the EU. But Russia annulled all price discounts after Yanukovych was chased from power in February following months of protests, raising the gas price to $485 per thousand cubic meters starting April 1.

Russia has offered a future price of $385, the price that Ukraine was paying until December, but Kiev has insisted on a lower price. Miller scoffed at that demand, saying it was significantly below European market prices.

In Moscow, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, at a meeting with the Gazprom chief and other officials, called the Ukrainian position "absurd" and said it amounted to blackmail over the pipelines.

Ukraine's energy minister, Yuriy Prodan, said Ukraine was prepared for the Russian cutoff.

"We are providing reliable transit of gas and supplies to domestic consumers," he said, adding that Ukraine could do that because of lower seasonal demand and previously stored gas.

In a related case, Gazprom announced Monday that it is suing Ukraine's Naftogaz in an international court for the $4.5 billion. Naftogaz said it has also filed a suit against Gazprom, seeking a "fair and market-based price" for gas, as well as a $6 billion repayment for what it said were overpayments for gas from 2010.

EU spokeswoman Sabine Berger said EU energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger remained committed to helping broker a deal between Kiev and Moscow.

One reason for EU involvement is the current state of Ukrainian gas reserves. Berger said they now stand at around 13.5 billion cubic meters but need to be at 18-20 billion cubic meters at the end of the summer for Europe to have enough gas this winter.

Berger said the EU was working toward a deal that could allow shipments of gas to Ukraine via Slovakia.

Ukrainian consumers, however, will be facing higher prices no matter what Russia does. Previous governments had sold gas to consumers at about a fifth of what Naftogaz pays for it — leaving little incentive to conserve and saddling the government with huge deficits.

Ukraine's new government is in the process of raising domestic gas prices, a condition of its $17 billion bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund.

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McHugh reported from Kiev, Ukraine. Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels contributed to this report.

BOSTON (AP) — Four of the acrobats seriously injured in a hair-hanging stunt gone awry are planning a lawsuit and are coming to terms with the idea their lives might never be the same, they said Tuesday from the hospital where they're recovering.

A total of eight acrobats from the U.S., Brazil, Bulgaria and Ukraine were injured May 4, when, investigators say, a carabiner clip snapped, sending them plummeting about 20 feet to the floor at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Providence, Rhode Island.

Four of the women spoke Tuesday at a news conference at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, where a number are still undergoing physical therapy. For some it was their first public appearance since the accident.

They declined to detail the extent of their individual injuries, but their lawyers said the performers had, collectively, experienced about two dozen surgeries.

Julissa Segrera, 20, said her dream had been to be a star performer. Now her dream is to be able to someday walk with her young son to the park.

Viktoriya Medeiros, 34, of Bulgaria, who designed the hair-hanging "human chandelier" act with her husband, said the women know they are lucky to be alive. She wore a neck brace and was in a wheelchair.

Dayana Costa, 26, of Brazil, said her family had put their lives on hold to be with her in Boston during the long recovery. She wore a neck brace, had pins in her arms and was in a motorized chair. She said her recovery was difficult and painful.

The lawyers, of Chicago's Clifford Law Offices, declined to say who would be the focus of a lawsuit.

The women's medical treatment is being covered through workers compensation.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock futures are little changed, as the Federal Reserve begins its two-day meeting. A government report out Tuesday said the pace of new home construction eased slightly last month.

KEEPING SCORE: Thirty minutes before the start of regular trading, Dow Jones industrial average futures are down 30 points to 16,671. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures are up three points to 1,926, while Nasdaq 100 futures are two points lower at 3,770.

Investors nudged the stock market to slight gains Monday, thanks in part to another round of corporate deals.

HOUSING: The Commerce Department said builders started work at an annual rate on 1.01 million homes in May. That was down 6.5 percent from 1.07 million in April.

FED: The central bank meets Tuesday and Wednesday with Fed officials widely expected to keep a key short-term rate near zero. Economists don't expect the Fed to begin increasing that rate for another year.

The Fed will also update its economic forecasts. That could result in the Fed trimming its estimate of 2014 growth after the government said last month that the economy shrank in the first three months of the year.

OIL: The price of crude fell 47 cents to $106.43 a barrel. The U.S. said it was deploying a small group of troops to Iraq, helping to ease concerns that a conflict could disrupt exports from OPEC's No. 2 oil producer. Those concerns have been behind crude oil's nearly 4 percent rise this month.

BONDS: The price of government bonds slipped, pushing Treasury yields up. The yield on the 10-year note rose to 2.63 percent from 2.60 late Monday.