63 ms·

The Fire Phone Is Officially a Failure

58 points by denzil_correa 12y ago

specialp 12y ago
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.
- moonka 12y ago
  Yep. Lack of Google Apps was a complete deal killer for me, even withstanding the price. I felt the same way when I tested out a Kindle Fire tablet (opted for a Nexus 7). You'd have to pry my Kindle reader out of my cold dead hands though.
  - edkennedy 12y ago
    I think the relative failure of the Fire tablet should have been a sign to Amazon that they needed a new approach for the phone.
    - wnissen 12y ago
      And specifically that the Fire tablet seems to be most successful among kids. The parental controls on Kindle Fire are pretty good, but the locked-down app store (No YouTube!) was only tolerable because the parent is choosing the apps.
  - ZoFreX 12y ago
    Lack of Google Apps was a big problem 2 years ago. These days, lack of Play Services means a huge number of non-Google Android apps won't work. Play Services is Android for many developers.
  - enlightenedfool 12y ago
    I bought the Fire HD 8.9", rooted and installed Play store. You can run all the apps on play store. It was a better deal that way.
    - rational-future 12y ago
      But nobody has payed Google for store access in this scenario. They may cut you off any time.
- chuckcode 12y ago
  Agreed. I had been impressed with Amazon's initial tries with the hardware space with kindle which really solved a customer need in an innovative way. In contrast the fire line of phones and tv seems to have really taken their eye off the ball. Customers don't want to pay a premium to buy another portal into purchasing things from Amazon.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  Yup, least surprising failure of a big-co hardware product launch in quite some time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7912878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7912878 FTA: "When it launched a few months ago, it was $199" $199 with the essentially non-optional AT&T plan. $649 regular price, which they would let you buy it at even though the phone was locked to AT&T no matter how you bought it. Into a market where the Nexus 5 already existed at $350 (fully unlocked) and Motorola had even cheaper options for very functional full-Android phones. Months later and I'm still kind of bemusedly surprised the Fire Phone launched at the price that it did because prior to launch I was nearly certain that a surprisingly low price relative to the hardware would be the killer feature, given Amazon's history and the fact that the phone was designed from the ground up to herd you into Amazon's content ecosystem (and I say that as a happy and high volume customer of Amazon Prime/Instant/Kindle).
  - mmanfrin 12y ago
    Months later and I'm still kind of bemusedly surprised the Fire Phone launched at the price that it did because prior to launch I was nearly certain that a surprisingly low price relative to the hardware would be the killer feature, given Amazon's history and the fact that the phone was designed from the ground up to herd you into Amazon's content ecosystem 100% agreed -- they've even said that their stated goal with the Kindle Fire was to bring quality tech at affordable prices; why they thought they could get away with a subprime phone at a prime price is beyond me.
- Argorak 12y ago
  That must be why the iPhone is such a spectacular failure. I don't think it has anything to do with the restrictiveness, just that it was not very compelling and had 2 weird gimmicks no one really had a use for. That combined with the low visibility of Amazon as a phone manufacturer, I can really understand people held off buying.
  - jmelloy 12y ago
    This isn't 2007, though. They were competing against 3 established brands and offering a more restricted product with no differentiators. Microsoft is having enough problems convincing people that a 3rd place app store is worth developing for, how was Amazon supposed to get in?
    - rational-future 12y ago
      By making it very easy to port Android apps and having lower fees.
    - mjevans 12y ago
      I think your rough list is... Apple Google Microsoft (in terms of how lucrative developing for a given platform seems). I like how Blackberry is considered 'effectively dead'; I've felt the same way since they failed to react to the iPhone.
  - MBCook 12y ago
    > That must be why the iPhone is such a spectacular failure. The iPhone has a VERY LARGE ecosystem of software and hardware to support it. There is a lot of value there. But the Fire Phone didn't have that. It ran a version of Android so they could have had a lot of stuff but instead they chose to prevent that. In the end it cost as much as their competitors but had no software and it's only unique features were somewhat gimmicky.
IkmoIkmo 12y ago
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.
- amputect 12y ago
  The fire phone (and other failed experiments like the Kin or the various Facebook phones) all seem like they're identifying "locking the buyer into a single corporate ecosystem" as a feature, but consumers are treating it as a bug.
  - nkozyra 12y ago
    Maybe not a feature, but a selling point for sure, and I couldn't agree more. That said, they don't really advertise the "locked in" part, but it's unlikely that it takes long for the average user to figure it out. The question "what does this phone do that others cannot" really was never answered with the Fire. (Other than that gimmicky perspective view thing)
  - SiVal 12y ago
    I think you're right, but Apple does exactly that, so it's clearly possible to succeed that way. Whether it's possible for anyone but Apple to succeed that way is another question. I think it might be--say a Chinese company with Chinese customers, or a future Google-only ecosystem, or an Amazon that negotiates a huge range of discounted offerings (20% discount at Starbucks and thousands of other brick & mortar restaurants and shops as long as you buy with your Amazon phone through the Amazon retail network, etc.
    - MBCook 12y ago
      With the iPhone Apple only had to be better than a smart phone, which they did. With Android Google had to be better than a smart phone, cheaper than an iPhone, or at least just as good and they basically did that. Today if you launch something new you need to be able to compete with the value in the iOS and Android ecosystems to draw people and that's a VERY big hurdle. Microsoft is trying their hardest but can't get it done. There is no surprise here. Amazon's software ability and follow through is best describe as "exists" and the third party ecosystem is tiny. I'd rather have any $200 Android phone (even a low quality one) than a free Fire Phone and I like Amazon. "Here's a phone, it has no popular apps, and they'll probably never be available!" Yeah. Same thing that killed the Pre. Same thing that's killing Windows Mobile.
meepmorp 12y ago
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.
- cwe 12y ago
  This seems like the only logical reason any sane person at Amazon thought this phone would be a good idea. It's such an obvious dud in this stage. These people aren't stupid, yet there is no way this product would ever be successful. It would be fascinating to learn just what they are thinking.
ihsw 12y ago
It's a failure because of being associated with AT&T, plain and simple.
- bengali3 12y ago
  this is a very large part of it
quasse 12y ago
$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.
rohunati 12y ago
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.
- SiVal 12y ago
  They're big enough to get some data by trying things.
- dnautics 12y ago
  failure is a data point. As a scientist, I would say, arguably the more important data are failures. Consider it an exercise in falsification.
  - rohunati 12y ago
    i agree that failure is an important data point, but i don't understand why that means amazon would want to build the fire phone. their reasoning couldn't have been "well this seems like a good idea, and if it fails, at least we'll have a data point!" I am curious what caused them to think the fire phone was a good idea.
bengali3 12y ago
> 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 ....
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  V2.0 is what I was thinking as well. Many amazon products have terrible version 1.0s (kindle fire tablet anyone?), but improve markedly in the future. Fire phone is terrible now, but I'm not going to let that convince me that it will still be terrible 3-5 years from now.
FreakyT 12y ago
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!
DigitalSea 12y ago
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.
- justaman 12y ago
  The same idea we see in Ubuntu's search feature should have been the approach taken to mobile devices. Produce software, not hardware.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  It's strange that Amazon thought it would be successful when it was obvious to most people from day one that it won't be. I don't think it was even controversial that it would fail.
- mandeepj 12y ago
  They started development on this phone during 2010. I think it got super delayed and that was one of the main reasons behind its failure.
SwellJoe 12y ago
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.
ufmace 12y ago
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.
- RyJones 12y ago
  I worked on this device. Every day we awaited the news that management had come to senses and cancelled the project. It was to my great surprise that it shipped at all.
zipop 12y ago
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.

58 points by denzil_correa 12y ago

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.

moonka 12y ago
Yep. Lack of Google Apps was a complete deal killer for me, even withstanding the price. I felt the same way when I tested out a Kindle Fire tablet (opted for a Nexus 7). You'd have to pry my Kindle reader out of my cold dead hands though.
- edkennedy 12y ago
  I think the relative failure of the Fire tablet should have been a sign to Amazon that they needed a new approach for the phone.
  - wnissen 12y ago
    And specifically that the Fire tablet seems to be most successful among kids. The parental controls on Kindle Fire are pretty good, but the locked-down app store (No YouTube!) was only tolerable because the parent is choosing the apps.
- ZoFreX 12y ago
  Lack of Google Apps was a big problem 2 years ago. These days, lack of Play Services means a huge number of non-Google Android apps won't work. Play Services is Android for many developers.
- enlightenedfool 12y ago
  I bought the Fire HD 8.9", rooted and installed Play store. You can run all the apps on play store. It was a better deal that way.
  - rational-future 12y ago
    But nobody has payed Google for store access in this scenario. They may cut you off any time.
chuckcode 12y ago
Agreed. I had been impressed with Amazon's initial tries with the hardware space with kindle which really solved a customer need in an innovative way. In contrast the fire line of phones and tv seems to have really taken their eye off the ball. Customers don't want to pay a premium to buy another portal into purchasing things from Amazon.
georgemcbay 12y ago
Yup, least surprising failure of a big-co hardware product launch in quite some time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7912878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7912878 FTA: "When it launched a few months ago, it was $199" $199 with the essentially non-optional AT&T plan. $649 regular price, which they would let you buy it at even though the phone was locked to AT&T no matter how you bought it. Into a market where the Nexus 5 already existed at $350 (fully unlocked) and Motorola had even cheaper options for very functional full-Android phones. Months later and I'm still kind of bemusedly surprised the Fire Phone launched at the price that it did because prior to launch I was nearly certain that a surprisingly low price relative to the hardware would be the killer feature, given Amazon's history and the fact that the phone was designed from the ground up to herd you into Amazon's content ecosystem (and I say that as a happy and high volume customer of Amazon Prime/Instant/Kindle).
- mmanfrin 12y ago
  Months later and I'm still kind of bemusedly surprised the Fire Phone launched at the price that it did because prior to launch I was nearly certain that a surprisingly low price relative to the hardware would be the killer feature, given Amazon's history and the fact that the phone was designed from the ground up to herd you into Amazon's content ecosystem 100% agreed -- they've even said that their stated goal with the Kindle Fire was to bring quality tech at affordable prices; why they thought they could get away with a subprime phone at a prime price is beyond me.
Argorak 12y ago
That must be why the iPhone is such a spectacular failure. I don't think it has anything to do with the restrictiveness, just that it was not very compelling and had 2 weird gimmicks no one really had a use for. That combined with the low visibility of Amazon as a phone manufacturer, I can really understand people held off buying.
- jmelloy 12y ago
  This isn't 2007, though. They were competing against 3 established brands and offering a more restricted product with no differentiators. Microsoft is having enough problems convincing people that a 3rd place app store is worth developing for, how was Amazon supposed to get in?
  - rational-future 12y ago
    By making it very easy to port Android apps and having lower fees.
  - mjevans 12y ago
    I think your rough list is... Apple Google Microsoft (in terms of how lucrative developing for a given platform seems). I like how Blackberry is considered 'effectively dead'; I've felt the same way since they failed to react to the iPhone.
- MBCook 12y ago
  > That must be why the iPhone is such a spectacular failure. The iPhone has a VERY LARGE ecosystem of software and hardware to support it. There is a lot of value there. But the Fire Phone didn't have that. It ran a version of Android so they could have had a lot of stuff but instead they chose to prevent that. In the end it cost as much as their competitors but had no software and it's only unique features were somewhat gimmicky.

IkmoIkmo 12y ago

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.

amputect 12y ago
The fire phone (and other failed experiments like the Kin or the various Facebook phones) all seem like they're identifying "locking the buyer into a single corporate ecosystem" as a feature, but consumers are treating it as a bug.
- nkozyra 12y ago
  Maybe not a feature, but a selling point for sure, and I couldn't agree more. That said, they don't really advertise the "locked in" part, but it's unlikely that it takes long for the average user to figure it out. The question "what does this phone do that others cannot" really was never answered with the Fire. (Other than that gimmicky perspective view thing)
- SiVal 12y ago
  I think you're right, but Apple does exactly that, so it's clearly possible to succeed that way. Whether it's possible for anyone but Apple to succeed that way is another question. I think it might be--say a Chinese company with Chinese customers, or a future Google-only ecosystem, or an Amazon that negotiates a huge range of discounted offerings (20% discount at Starbucks and thousands of other brick & mortar restaurants and shops as long as you buy with your Amazon phone through the Amazon retail network, etc.
  - MBCook 12y ago
    With the iPhone Apple only had to be better than a smart phone, which they did. With Android Google had to be better than a smart phone, cheaper than an iPhone, or at least just as good and they basically did that. Today if you launch something new you need to be able to compete with the value in the iOS and Android ecosystems to draw people and that's a VERY big hurdle. Microsoft is trying their hardest but can't get it done. There is no surprise here. Amazon's software ability and follow through is best describe as "exists" and the third party ecosystem is tiny. I'd rather have any $200 Android phone (even a low quality one) than a free Fire Phone and I like Amazon. "Here's a phone, it has no popular apps, and they'll probably never be available!" Yeah. Same thing that killed the Pre. Same thing that's killing Windows Mobile.

meepmorp 12y ago

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.

cwe 12y ago
This seems like the only logical reason any sane person at Amazon thought this phone would be a good idea. It's such an obvious dud in this stage. These people aren't stupid, yet there is no way this product would ever be successful. It would be fascinating to learn just what they are thinking.

ihsw 12y ago

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

bengali3 12y ago
this is a very large part of it

quasse 12y ago

$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.

rohunati 12y ago

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.

SiVal 12y ago
They're big enough to get some data by trying things.
dnautics 12y ago
failure is a data point. As a scientist, I would say, arguably the more important data are failures. Consider it an exercise in falsification.
- rohunati 12y ago
  i agree that failure is an important data point, but i don't understand why that means amazon would want to build the fire phone. their reasoning couldn't have been "well this seems like a good idea, and if it fails, at least we'll have a data point!" I am curious what caused them to think the fire phone was a good idea.

bengali3 12y ago

> 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 ....

hkmurakami 12y ago
V2.0 is what I was thinking as well. Many amazon products have terrible version 1.0s (kindle fire tablet anyone?), but improve markedly in the future. Fire phone is terrible now, but I'm not going to let that convince me that it will still be terrible 3-5 years from now.

FreakyT 12y ago

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!

DigitalSea 12y ago

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.

justaman 12y ago
The same idea we see in Ubuntu's search feature should have been the approach taken to mobile devices. Produce software, not hardware.
higherpurpose 12y ago
It's strange that Amazon thought it would be successful when it was obvious to most people from day one that it won't be. I don't think it was even controversial that it would fail.
mandeepj 12y ago
They started development on this phone during 2010. I think it got super delayed and that was one of the main reasons behind its failure.

SwellJoe 12y ago

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.

ufmace 12y ago

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.

RyJones 12y ago
I worked on this device. Every day we awaited the news that management had come to senses and cancelled the project. It was to my great surprise that it shipped at all.

zipop 12y ago

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.