Amazon Phone

[Aurelius]

They likely already have followup designs in the pipeline, never to see the light of day now. Amazon missed the mark about as hard as they could have. I bet they aren't even surprised that people didn't want an expensive AT&T locked phone without access to the Play Store and a gimmicky head tracking feature.

Amazon would have been better served with a multiple carrier inexpensive phone. Look at a phone like the Moto G, the phone is cheap and runs great (depending on the version). They should have done something around that price <$100 (off contract) and tried to move volume to pimp out Amazon services.

As I like to tell people: Amazon desperately wants to be Apple (a hardware company with fully integrated services), but it doesn't really understand what that means or have the talent to make it happen. For all of its lock-in, Apple at least designs products for what it thinks customers want -- Amazon is designing products primarily for what it wants (to make you buy from Amazon more often).

Given that Amazon just lost a few hundred million dollars in one quarter, it's probably going to scale back its hardware ambitions. I don't know that it can afford a second Fire phone, and the bad reputation may spill over to the Kindle Fire line in the process.

 

[mi7chy]

For all of its lock-in, Apple at least designs products for what it thinks customers want

Maybe it's too early for jokes but that's funny. Wasn't until market share declined significantly that Apple was dictating small screen (fixed with iPhone 6 and 6+) and deficient DRAM (fixed with iPad Air 2).

Simple reasons the Amazon phone didn't take off are because it wasn't subsidized heavily considering it's mainly a tool to promote Amazon sales, parallax is gimmicky, it doesn't offer anything groundbreaking or making daily life easier and the market is already crowded with four distinct ecosystems with 3rd and 4th struggling so good luck being last.

 

[Saturn_V]

Given that Amazon just lost a few hundred million dollars in one quarter, it's probably going to scale back its hardware ambitions. I don't know that it can afford a second Fire phone, and the bad reputation may spill over to the Kindle Fire line in the process.

Tech writers are making a lot of hay about this loss and the Fire Phone's failure, but I don't see it. A few hundred million is just a drop in a bucket for a company like Amazon. I don't see it altering their grand designs at all. (they did after all practically gave away their Fire TV sticks just two days ago)

 

[Ocellaris]

Tech writers are making a lot of hay about this loss and the Fire Phone's failure, but I don't see it. A few hundred million is just a drop in a bucket for a company like Amazon. I don't see it altering their grand designs at all. (they did after all practically gave away their Fire TV sticks just two days ago)

Amazon exists to make shareholders happy. Shareholders don't like when a company throws tens of millions of dollars into a hole on a failed product. AMZN stock has been trending down for much of the year, and took a substantial hit at their last earnings meetings.

You can't create profit by piling up failures.