Amazon blames poor Fire Phone sales on the pricing, ignores other problems
Despite its name, the Amazon Fire Phone has not been a hot seller. Last week Amazon shared financial data with investors, and they reported a huge quarterly loss. The Amazon Fire phone was likely not the lone culprit of the poor numbers, but it certainly did not help. Amazon themselves have talked about why they think the Fire Phone hasn’t sold as much as they hoped.
“I think people come to expect a great value, and we sort of mismatched expectations. We thought we had it right. But we’re also willing to say, ‘we missed.’ And so we corrected.”
– Amazon Senior VP David Limp
The $200 price of the Fire Phone was definitely a surprise move. Amazon usually prices their products very competitively, as we’ve seen with the super cheap Kindle Fire line. Still. that was hardly the only problem for the device. The UI is weird and clunky, the hardware is very uninspiring, and they advertise it on TV with kids. I’m not really sure that depicting kids using your device is a message they wanted to send.
The good news is that the Fire Phone can now be had for free with a new contract. Does that sweeten the deal any more? Only time will tell. What do you think of the Amazon Fire Phone?
[via Fortune]