Amazon offers all non-iPhone smart phones for $0.01

Insane deal extending until Monday offers smart phones for a penny, if shoppers sign for 2 year plan

Make no mistake, the holiday shopping season is starting early this year, with one deal already drawing people well before the "Black Friday" rush.

E-commerce hub Amazon is offering all the smart phones it carries, except the iPhone, for $0.01, if shoppers sign up for a two-year plan on the spot. Yes, you heard that right, ALL of Amazon's non-Apple smart phones for a penny. The offer is only valid until 11:50 PST Monday, Nov. 28th.

Among the 97 phones being offered are the (brand new) Motorola Droid RAZR 4G, the Samsung Galaxy S II, the Motorola Droid Bionic 4G, and the HTC Rezound 4G. To give an idea of the savings behind this deal, the Samsung Galaxy S II phone usually runs about $599.99. Then again, the plans for service remain the same. The Sprint plan I perused for the Samsung phone had three options: a $99.99 per month plan with unlimited minutes, an $89.99 per month plan for 900 minutes, and a $69.99 per month plan for 450 minutes.

Other smart phone deals right now include a free $100 Amazon gift card for everyone who buys a Verizon or Sprint phone with hotpsot capability and get a hotspot plan. Additionally, Verizon is letting shoppers double their data plan if they buy any 4G smart phone this month, while Sprint customers get free activation until December 5.

This is the second phone-grabbing ploy by Amazon in only a few months, the likely strategy of which is to get eyes on their site. Last October, around the time of the release of the iPhone 4S, Amazon ran a similar deal, offering all Verizon smart phones for a penny.

In fact, if the price of the new Kindle Fire is any indication, Amazon seems to be full speed ahead with its sales strategy of offering electronic products for low prices in order to promote other goods on their main site.

A recent estimate found that the cost of the innards of the Kindle Fire tablet, added to the manufacturing costs, are actually putting Amazon in the red, considering the tablet's notoriously low $199 price tag. The tablet's Bill of Materials (BOM), with manufacturing costs added, come in around $209.63. A little quick math tells us that this figures for about $10 out of Amazon's pocket for every Kindle Fire sold.

However, analysts expect that Amazon will make up the difference by running heavy promotion on the new Kindle for their real cash cow, physical goods sold on Amazon like food items, shoes, and diapers. Likewise, some believe Amazon's smart phone deal is geared toward finding new customer base to maintain market growth.

Last week, Amazon announced a bevy of other notable bargains, called "Countdown to Black Friday."