Amazon excels at many things, but they've demonstrated that hardware (well, actually, primarily the software that runs on the hardware, but still both) is a huge weakness.
- Kindle Fire initially fulfilled an unmet market - Android(y) tablets for less than $200 that weren't total garbage. When the Kindle Fire launched, there were none. Tablets cost $300+ unless you were satisfied with some terrible off-brand tablet.
- The Fire phone. Total flop. Total miss. They offered nothing to the average Android phone user that wasn't already available, often for cheaper. Amazon has been giving the milk away for free and are now reigning in their services (which is why there's no Amazon Prime for Chromecast, for example).
- The TV. I think it's sleek looking and competitively priced (with everything but the Chromecast, cough, cough). You're basically throwing a dart at Apple TV, Roku, Google Player and the Amazon TV product, though.
I welcome anyone to the hardware market, primarily because the competition will drive this and frankly we have some dismal options outside of phones. Anything that can drive innovation (and prices downward) sounds good to me. Flops will happen along the way. Companies will try things and fail magnificently and that's ultimately good for (almost) everyone.
The Kindle Fire itself, also, is not that terrible. I can think of ways it may be better. But as a media consumption device, it is pretty good. I like it.
The phone? Too expensive. Couldn't compete with the moto g.
The television? Beats me. Kids like it.
I still think e-ink is the best way to read long texts, and it's a shame that you can no longer colloquially refer to a 'Kindle' and have people know what you're talking about.
The original Kindle Fire blew the market for Android tablets wide open.
Kids version of tablet requires playtime kids subscription of $3/mo - which is something I could afford but turns me off.
That apart, the Appstore UI is a joke compared to the pace at which Playstore is evolving. They keep parroting their leader's line that it's the content that matters more than the device but Kindle Fire is a failure in many ways in my opinion.
Amazon wanted a gateway to their media content which is a right strategy but they got the execution horribly wrong by forking Android. They showcased their silk browser during Kindle Fire was launched and I was dumbstruck that they couldn't foresee bandwidth is only going to get cheaper.
They could have launched a device BUT it should have been an Android device, not a fork. They could have developed a high quality media streaming app on multiple platforms, similar to kindle reader, Android, chrome browser, iOS and so on. But no! They had to fork the Android!! Now app developers would have to build their apps and submit to iTunes, Play Store AND the mediocre Amazon Appstore; no wonder the app selection sucks!
I sincerely hope they give up on this hardware madness and get back to focusing on pure e-reading experience (Kindle reader), AWS and e-commerce. I've been waiting for colored Kindle reader for half a decade now; and what about educational/technical e-books? That market remains completely untapped just because they haven't sorted out rendering technical books.
The kindle reader content team is getting stretched very thin because they now have to support App store and a myriad of devices! So no wonder the innovation on Kindle reader (both hardware/software) has slowed down significantly.
Saving grace in all this is that AWS's pace of innovation/product-rollout hasn't been affected yet, but soon it would also be impacted unless they stop money flowing into the sink.
PS: Please excuse broken flow of thoughts :-)