The Fire Phone Is Officially a Failure

As innovative as Amazon are in the online commerce space, I think everyone called this from the start as a massive failure. You would think with the trove of information that Amazon have as well as the incredibly smart data scientists they employ they could have analysed their treasure trove of info to see that a phone with restricted access to applications, sub-par hardware and overpriced retail cost would not sell very well. Heck, even without analysing any data, you would have the answer. What makes this situation even weirder is Jeff Bezos is a notorious data-driven decision maker. He is a numbers guy, he does not usually make decisions based on impulse or the need to compete, so I do not know how things got to this point.

Does this mean that Amazon are out of the smartphone business because of one failure? Not necessarily. Amazon have the money, the power and means to release something spectacular, but they will need to learn from their mistakes as well as their competitors and go back to the drawing board. I honestly would not be surprised if they already have a new phone in the works already.

One area Amazon could beat their competitors on is price Even though you can already buy a whole bunch of affordable Android phones, they usually come with horrible hardware and are made of the cheapest materials possible. If they can release a phone with a decent camera, proper unrestricted Android OS, plenty of RAM, removable battery, great GPU/CPU and get the cost low enough that it wipes the floor with Google's offerings and price point, we would have a viable fight on our hands.

I can't fathom why Amazon could not find the expertise to see this one coming.

I mean, let's be real here, it's an extremely restricted platform that cuts you off from tons and I mean tons of great content on app stores we already have, content we're already familiar with.

And then it provides you with sub-par hardware at that price level and nothing more than gimmicks.

And one of the big reasons for all of this? To push a feature allowing people to point their phone at something and buy it on Amazon. Surprise, that's a software-based feature you could build for just about any phone.

Honestly this is no surprise. I am a big Amazon fan, but if you are selling a restricted platform item you have to sell it at a loss. I do not know what they were thinking. It was priced higher than comparable flagship phones while being somewhat locked down.

> The Fire phone’s product page at Amazon lists over 3,000 user reviews, mostly negative—the average rating is two out of five stars.

This highlights Amazons commitment to their customers. This is why Amazon will be #1 in the customer loyalty game in the long run. NO other company would keep this many bad reviews on their OWN product page.

V2.0 will be sooo much stronger because of this. Tough lesson to learn but invaluable internal motivation & feedback for the team.

Now if v2.0 isn't on AT&T, I will try it ....

I'm surprised Amazon has doubled down on the idea of screwing their customers out of a good Android experience. That's all this is: Amazon ignored what was good for users (access to the whole Android ecosystem), and instead focused on what was good for Amazon's immediate desire to extract ongoing revenue from their customers.

Instead of making a better phone for consumers, they focused on making a better phone for Amazon. And, it turns out, "Makes Amazon richer", is on nobodies feature wish list for their next phone. Obviously, most folks probably don't mind Amazon making money...but, why would anyone buy a phone for which the only major differentiation is that it sends most of the long term app revenue to Amazon, and by doing so, limits the user to far fewer apps and less freedom to do with the phone what you want?

I'm almost amused at the gall of Amazon thinking they had the marketing and product chops to pull off an Apple-scale consumer-fleecing like this.

What I'm really curious about, but probably won't find out anytime soon, is what the internal politics on the development of this were like. Did somebody high up decide that Amazon had to have a phone, no matter how bad the market looked like for it, command that it be done, and the whole hierarchy went along with it, even though most of the company was kinda meh about it? Or did a critical mass of lower-level people inside the company really think that this was a good idea?

Most of the tech press and community had a feeling that it was a bad idea that was unlikely to ever go anywhere, and it's hard to believe that the entire company was unaware of this and of the market facts behind it.

This iteration is a failure, at least. It remains to be seen if the overall idea of an Amazon phone is dead or not.

I personally wouldn't ever buy one, much like I'd never get a Facebook phone, but it could be that there's people out there who might.

I still find it astounding that high-ranking execs at Amazon could have thought that this product had even the slightest chance of being successful.

If the Kindle Fire tablets had all cost the same price as an iPad, I seriously doubt they would be enjoying the popularity that they have today. It would appear that the thought process leading to the existence of that Fire Phone was that the Kindle Fire's success has less to do with price and more to do with Amazon.com ecosystem integration!

How did they not see this one coming? Bezos is notoriously a data driven decision maker, I wonder what data prompted them to build the fire phone.

I have to wonder if Amazon's failure to recognize the obvious here has anything to do with Bezos' "we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time." That statement has always kind of bothered me. I get what he was trying to say but I have to think they believe they can innovate against markets.

$83 million in unsold phones is a lot of inventory. I wonder if they'll end up sold on Woot or plowed into a landfill a la E.T.

It's a failure because of being associated with AT&T, plain and simple.