12 ms·

The Fire phone debacle

233 points by czr80 12y ago

comrh 12y ago
Makes you wonder why any company would get into hardware.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
>"it now sells for 99 cents" (OP) // Where can I get one for 99c, in UK on ebay [new] they're about £200 (~$300) on O2 network or £250 unlocked. Lowest monthly for a contract is £28.
- pja 12y ago
  I'm going to guess that's 99c on contract. So not really 99c at all.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    Exactly, it's a stupid thing to say. It currently sells for "$450 on a 2 year contract" - this is why people end up paying insane amounts for mobile phones. "Have you seen my phone, it was free." [ie £45 a month for 2 years]
- delecti 12y ago
  The other commenter is correct, it's $0.99 with a 2 year contract to ATT. It's $450 off-contract, though it was briefly $200 off-contract late last year.
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  It says that's the price with a contract. So it's not really $0.99, it's $0.99 plus a monthly installment you agree to pay over the next two years, which will be rolled into the rest of your wireless service charge. US cellular providers have very opaque pricing so it's hard to tell how much those installments really are. But usually when you have the option to buy a phone with or without a contract, the spread's $400-$500. That strongly implies the real price is about $401-$501, amortized over 24 months. Long story short, using the perverse mathematics of United States mobile phone pricing, the £200 you're finding is about 3/4 of the $0.99 the article says Americans are paying.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    I quoted the article. It does make a correction of sorts at the end. The full sentence: >"Originally priced at $199 (with contract) and intended as an iPhone competitor, it now sells for 99 cents, and Amazon has taken a $170 million write-down largely attributable to unsold Fire Phone inventory."* // So they are comparing '99c' to '$199 (with contract)'. Meh, I should know better than to expect realistic reporting. [to avoid any doubt I'm not disagreeing with you in any way]
- andybak 12y ago
  What I don't get about US pricings is that the phone price stays constant whatever the contract. In the UK a phone might be free on a £45/month contract, £100 on a £30/month contract and so on. Does that not appen in the US?
  - jzwinck 12y ago
    In the US there are generally only two levels: the subsidized price and the full price. If you get a phone with a very cheap contract, you will have to pay full price, just as if you got no contract at all. Such people might therefore prefer a prepaid plan. If you get a phone with a "normal" (in UK terms, "expensive") plan, you get the subsidized price for the phone. There's usually no gradation beyond that...although people who spend huge amounts of money on their monthly bills due to long distance calling, roaming, etc., will receive extra promotions (we're talking $1000/month customers).
  - dsr_ 12y ago
    It used to be that you paid for the phone, then you paid for service. You can still do that, if you're prepared to pay $400-$1000 for a phone. (Except Google's Nexus 4 was reasonably priced.) But the usual method for the last decade was that you paid for a 24 month contract, and pay a lump up front that paid for the differentiation of the low-end phones (free, or 99c, or $50) from the high end phones ($100 - $300). The rest of the price was invisibly wrapped into the contract -- and there would likely be a hefty early termination fee if you wanted to walk away from the contract. Recently, phone companies have been trying to extract even more money by offering a non-contract service contract (cancel any time, no fee) along with a rent-to-own plan on the phone (pay a chunk up front, then after 24 payments it's yours.) For some reason this does not result in a discount for the service plan...
blhack 12y ago
I wonder if we'll ever see on-demand assembly of stuff like this. Amazon doesn't have to invest anything into phones that might not get sold, just "raw materials" that get assembled into phones on demand in their fullfillment centers. Any unassmbled processors, screens, cameras, etc. just get sold back onto the market if the phone doesn't gain success.
- ansible 12y ago
  I wonder if we'll ever see on-demand assembly of stuff like this. That is and has been done. Like for the Moto X, which is custom assembled if you do a custom order. However, there is a substantial ongoing cost to keep a manufacturing line up and running for a product. If you're not currently running phones (or whatever product) every day, then you'd want to use the line space for other products. This implies setup / teardown costs and (re)training. In general, the manufacturer would prefer to start running the product at some given volume per day, be given plenty of notice to scale up or down the volume, and then cease production and be done with it. That minimizes their costs.
bengali3 12y ago
> As an investor you have to ask yourself, Is this company doing too many things? I'd be more inclined to ask: Are they winning at enough things? If no, then are they doing enough things? One of my favorite quotes that I gathered last year is from Jeff: "Risk is a necessary component of progress"
sekasi 12y ago
Bold or irresponsible move? Not sure. Given the incredibly low profit margin of most non-iphone smartphones on the market today (I think the average samsung profit margin on a phone is $11) I can't help but wonder what the real source of revenue was planned to be. Increased shopping through mobile? Make your android/ios products better? It just never made any sense, but I guess many successful products don't make initial sense either.
- megaultra 12y ago
  Of course it's for increased shopping through mobile. My daughter bought a Kindle and she admitted her ebook purchases have increased tenfold. Others have told me similar. I'm deathly afraid to get one for the same reason. Frictionless purchases and vertical channel integration makes perfect sense to me.
  - sekasi 12y ago
    Do you require a whole new device for frictionless shopping? I'm not so convinced that's the case.
  - elarkin 12y ago
    My ebook purchases also skyrocketed after I got a Kindle. But it didn't rise because the kindle made it easy to buy ebooks, or even because I prefer ebooks (for technical stuff, I actually don't). It's because I was reading a lot more. I went from 1 or 2 books a year (if even) to 1 to 2 books a week. My experience is anecdotal, but it might be worthwhile to ask your acquaintances why they buy so many ebooks after buying a Kindle.
- rhino369 12y ago
  More and more digital content consumption is happening on mobile devices. And Amazon can't sell on iOS devices because Apple locks out anyone who won't pay a 30% ransom. You can't buy a book or rent an instant movie on an iPhone. It is a big weak spot.
  - jlarocco 12y ago
pbreit 12y ago
I don't get the Fire phone at all. iPhone users are never going to switch to it. Can't see Android users switching either. I appreciate that they tried some new things such as Firefly (although that is apparently available on iOS/Android, as it should be), the gestures and some of the other UI differences. But the 3D stuff is lame and the overall aesthetic is dreadful. The Kindle is apparently doing well and makes perfect sense. And 2 of my new favorite gadgets are Fire TV (vocal search is the way to go) and Echo (very well done an a no-brainer at $99). ps I got my Fire phone for $199 no-contract with free year of Prime ($99 net unlocked).
- patja 12y ago
  The Kindle does so many things right but like many of Amazon's products leaves me shaking my head and asking "what are they thinking?" Case in point is the Special Offers, or ads shown on the Kindle. Initially I kind of liked them, especially when they would occasionally just throw you $5 off your next Kindle purchase or make me aware of new books. But the lack of targeting became so annoying. I had so many ads for titles I already purchased for the Kindle, and so many annoying ads for things like toilet paper and home security monitoring that I lost quite a bit of respect for Amazon and the utter lack of optimization they did around Special Offers.
  - eropple 12y ago
    They are thinking that they are making a somewhat cheaper device for people who don't have the capacity to lose respect for a corporation over a lack of ad-targeting. I'm pretty sure they're right.
    - sofal 12y ago
      You say that as if it were some kind of moral failing. I bought the version with ads not because I want to be specially targeted by ads, but because it was cheaper and the ads are not intrusive and don't bother me. I use my Kindle to read books, not to get shopping tips. The only reason an ad would annoy me is if it intruded on my attention while I'm reading my book. They can try to sell me pink panties while it's off for all I care. If they're not targeting correctly, that's their problem, and it is no skin off my nose.
jph 12y ago
The Fire phone is a gorgeous hardware success in my opinion -- if you try it, it's fast and sleek. The Firefly scanner is super-convenient for shopping. The show-stopper issue for me is the UI. It feels as if screen elements are sloshing, or hard to find, and the UI is hard to use when I'm in motion. I expect the UI will be easy for Amazon to solve. The phone is a version 1 and a strong debut -- even if it didn't sell well.
- EpicEng 12y ago
  > ...and a strong debut -- even if it didn't sell well. I'm not sure one follows from the other... how exactly did the Fire make a "strong debut"?
- killface 12y ago
  Someone who isn't me helped work on this portion of the project. The system UI was written and re-written a half dozen times. They tried to do it internally, they tried design agencies, they tried consultants, and all failed miserably. Not because they sucked, but because the Amazon management team was nearly impossible to deal with. Developers would get conflicting requirements from multiple stakeholders, who would then argue like children. You had managers who would throw a tantrum if they didn't get a pet feature in. Etc, etc. The last I heard, they basically downloaded the android OS, and re-wrote all of the system UI framework components. Of course, this meant that most android apps broke because they failed to make all of the options functional, so they spent somewhere around twice the time fixing issues as they did writing them.
devindotcom 12y ago
When I attended the launch, they had a hands-on period where I noticed a few of the issues people have pointed out in reviews. But every phone has issues. More worryingly, I asked about a few things that the unique tech in the Fire Phone could be used for - nothing groundbreaking, just little suggestions: "It'd be great to have the tilt controls do ____ here" or "Do you have plans to allow users to turn this on/off?" Things like that. Almost all were met with a "wow, no, I don't think so, we haven't looked into that at all." I don't mean to suggest I'm some sort of UX genius or anything, these were just ordinary features one would expect to have been considered (and possibly rejected) based on everything Apple, Google, and Microsoft have done to advance the state of the art. Amazon hadn't given a moment's thought to any of them! Combined with the other stuff they tend to do in their original hardware, it cemented my thoughts that there's some kind of weird naivete pervading their entire hardware process, and no one to even recognize it, much less address it. I was pretty sure from the second I was given the phone to hold that it would be a dud, but felt it was possible that ingenuity might save the day. Unfortunately not the case, and it's too bad because there's so much cool stuff in there!
- ctdonath 12y ago
  No power switch (even soft)? Really?
  - MadManE 12y ago
    I think he was speaking to turning the features on and off, not the phone. At least, that's how I read it.
    - devindotcom 12y ago
      Yes, I was kind of imagining pointing to something on the phone when I wrote that, which of course did not come through in the comment...
  - maratd 12y ago
    It has a power button ...
SwellJoe 12y ago
I have a Fire Phone. I couldn't resist, when they were $199 and include a year of Prime (which I already pay for), it's $100 for a quite high end piece of hardware. And, the hardware actually is really great. Camera is great, display is great, touchscreen is great. 2GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. It's very high end phone hardware at a very low end phone price. That said, it's an awful phone. The OS feels clunky and old. The 3D stuff is, as mentioned in the article, gimmicky and pointless. Firefly is just annoying (it seemingly pops up at random, as if to say, "Hey, wanna buy something? You should totally buy something."). The interface, where it has diverged from Android, is confusing as hell. Menus pop up when you rock the phone, or shake it, or something, I dunno. It just randomly pops stuff up sometimes and I don't know why or how to replicate it. The status bar is disabled by default and the launch screen is more limited and frustrating than the original launch screen on the G1 (the first Android devices). Camera comes up every time I try to adjust the volume because the buttons are right next to each other. This also seems to be a trigger for Firefly...maybe. I honestly don't know how Firefly is called into existence, but it's popped up dozens of times since I've owned the phone, none of which were times I wanted it. Amazon built the phone Amazon wanted. It's not a phone designed around customer needs/wants, at all. They even pulled out a bunch of functionality for seemingly no reason other than they want people to buy more things from Amazon. For example, you can't use your music on the device as a ring tone or alarm (a feature that has existed in Android approximately forever). But, Amazon will sell you ring tones. It is possible to sideload the Google Play Store, which is one redeeming characteristic of the phone...so, I have GMail, Firefox browser (which is not in the Amazon store, but can also be sideloaded), calendar, docs, etc. But, it's still not a pleasant phone experience. The UI is needlessly opaque, and the unique features of the phone are pointless or annoying. The unique features are also not at all discoverable. I didn't know Firefly could recognize music and art, that's kinda neat. I don't know how to use any of the buttons and movements to make the phone do things. They seem nearly random when I try to use those features, which is quite frustrating. I gave it, I think a 3 star review, at Amazon, on the strength of the hardware, the very low price, and the fact that Google Play Store can be sideloaded relatively easily. But, I would never recommend it for someone who isn't a tinkerer. It's just too confusing, and the native apps (for email, maps, etc.) are weak. Edit: And perhaps the most frustrating thing is that there is no back button. You have to do a swipe gesture from the bottom (the very bottom, or it scrolls instead) of the display. I sometimes find myself having to attempt this a half dozen times to make it work. It is incredibly frustrating; and worse, I find myself doing it on my Nexus 7 (which has a back button and doesn't respond to this gesture). It's training me to be their kinda stupid.
ninv 12y ago
Jeff should spilit the Amazon in to two companies, Amazon.com and Amazon Research Labs. Amazon.com will be the old Amazon and he can continue his "copy the latest gadget or trend" in Amazon Research Labs. I think he should shut down everything and focus on AWS and Amazon.com only.
- RyJones 12y ago
  Hardware is developed at lab126.com.
- sonoffett 12y ago
  They do have research labs, eg lab 126 and a9.
chuckcode 12y ago
With apple charging 30% of revenue [1] for in app purchases I'm sure that Bezos and others will continue to be concerned about the platform as well as the content. Might be a better strategy to partner with android than start a new ecosystem but I'm sure they want to have more control over the platform. [1] http://www.macstories.net/stories/a-discussion-about-apples-unsatisfactory-in-app-purchase-policies/ http://www.macstories.net/stories/a-discussion-about-apples-...
- aroch 12y ago
  Google[1] and Amazon[2] also charge 30%... [1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... >You receive 70% of the payment [2] http://gameservices.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/inapppurchasing.html http://gameservices.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/inapp... >developers earn 70 percent
  - minthd 12y ago
    Google gives the app developer to use other in-app payments means, to save the fee.
  - chuckcode 12y ago
    As stated in the original article I reference [1] and the google play developer policies [2] google/android has exceptions for goods that can be used on other devices like amazon prime movies, music, magazines, etc. That is why you can't buy new movies etc. in the amazon app on iPhone but you can on Android. In either case it is clear that the owners of the platform don't want it to turn into a commodity like the rest of the web and want a slice of all revenue. That means that amazon will need to have more leverage over the platform and devices. [1] http://www.macstories.net/stories/a-discussion-about-apples-unsatisfactory-in-app-purchase-policies/ http://www.macstories.net/stories/a-discussion-about-apples-... [2] https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html
andrewmutz 12y ago
It is extremely difficult for large organizations to create the sort of innovative leaps that startups can create. Amazon is attempting to do this. They have been successful in many different ways, but for every winner they create they need to create multiple losers. The fire phone seems to be one of these losers, but time will tell. I really admire Amazon's tolerance for failure. Most large companies would never take such risks.
- discodave 12y ago
  Another way of thinking about it is that it is extremely difficult for startups to create successful innovative leaps since most of them fail. Amazon is more like a VC fund or an incubator than one individual startup. What's the 2014 revenue of all YC companies combined? That would be a good number to compare Amazons revenue to.
- Rimpinths 12y ago
  What you should really admire is Amazon's shareholders' tolerance for failure. A lot more companies would be more likely to take big risks like Amazon if their shareholders would tolerate year after year of losses. Time will tell if they are stupid or admirable.
throwaway1x7q 12y ago
I was there for a year. On that team. This article is quite inaccurate.
- anindyabd 12y ago
  You were on the Fire Phone team? Fascinating. Care to elaborate on some of the inaccuracies?
  - throwaway1x7q 12y ago
    Yes i was on the original team, before [almost] everyone walked out. see below
- fosk 12y ago
  Can you elaborate why it's inaccurate?
  - throwaway1x7q 12y ago
    - team was not scrapped by jeff, at least not until large number of people walked out due to mismanagement - prototypes that worked (and were of phone size & shape) existed more than 2 years before launch but then (as mentioned) team walked and it all had to be scrapped - hw team often undercut sw team by replacing components and not telling anyone about it - hw team often made mistakes of the very basic variety (two separate sets of pull-ups on a single i2c bus) - some parts choices were motivated by personal interests of people in the hw team, even against their own data & analyses. This was allowed to proceed - some of the management made the team look very foolish in front of vendors (asking questions that made no sense in the current millennium) - sw team was kept busy by endless meetings with no end in sight, which significantly cut into any chance of productivity
    - potatolicious 12y ago
      > "- sw team was kept busy by endless meetings with no end in sight, which significantly cut into any chance of productivity" Sounds like Amazon alright. I was there for two years and this defined so much of my time spent. We'd have endless meetings with endless stakeholders. This would cut deeply into development time, and all scheduling revolved around PM schedules with no regard for the productivity cost of pulling engineers into meetings every other hour, all day long. Which would of course result in more meetings to discuss why we're not shipping things quickly enough, and more meetings to remediate the situation... By the time I left that godforsaken wasteland of a tech company I was easily doing ~3 hours of meetings in a given day, all spread out naturally, because fuck concentrating and getting work done.
marcusgarvey 12y ago
>Clearly, Amazon isn’t yet on the same side of the "loved" spectrum as the brands Bezos named in his memo. Devoted fans of Apple, Nike, and Disney will spend any amount of money just for a small taste of their products and culture. Amazon certainly isn’t in the same camp as supposedly "unloved" brands like Walmart—far from it. But Amazon just isn’t as cool or beloved as Bezos might hope. People also fall out of love, as they have done at one point or another with many of the examples mentioned here. Be essential, that' s much better.
VLM 12y ago
Amazon's simplified big picture strategy is the application of perfect execution to dominate a market. They're really good at it. They optimize the whole process from the website, to the box magically appearing at my door two days later. For books and food and ebooks and "stuff" in general, I find that ability to perfectly execute rather important, and they get lots of my business. They're the kings of detail orientation. Process failure is not an option. They thought they could execute perfectly on designing and shipping phones. I believe they can. The problem is the market for phones doesn't care about flawless execution. Legendarily the existing network providers suck and the existing phones aren't too great either but people love them anyway and never make their buying decisions based on who's most likely to ship on time or least likely to crash. They would fail exactly the same way if they tried to sell fast food or American cars or car insurance, where nobody cares about quality and only want low price. They would be a huge success in something like medical supply logistics (don't they already sell stuff like that?) or aerospace (spaceX better look out) The challenge for them is trying to sell perfect logistics, perfect performance, perfect execution in general to markets where people currently really don't care. I think they are running out of consumer markets that they don't already dominate where people care about flawless execution. Its interesting that all the stuff I use with my phone comes from Amazon. Case, bluetooth ear piece, BT headphones, charger, cable... I'd even buy a phone from them, although I'd buy the phone I want, not a fire. Also note they're good at shipping a variety but not good at making anything. I never want Amazon's XYZ, ever. I want an XYZ, and Amazon is the best in the business at getting a XYZ delivered to me.
dperfect 12y ago
Amazon seems to have truly become the Walmart of e-commerce, and I'm not just talking about what the company does (commerce), but rather what the brand represents. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Walmart and Amazon have proven that if you dominate the supply chain landscape and offer a huge variety with low margins, you can do moderately well (i.e. stay in business). But with so much being essentially commodity goods and services (physical and digital), you really can't expect higher margins. So Amazon lives on, even after 20 years in the business. But with that much history and branding (intentional and unintentional), you really can't expect to create demand for your own premium products - competing with companies that have spent the same amount of time (decades) marketing themselves as design-driven, high quality, premium brands. It appears that Amazon expects to pull a complete 180 with their brand overnight, as if a product itself (if it's "cool enough") can negate and rise above 20 years of commodity reseller branding. Sounds a bit like the lone hacker who expects their next mobile app to explode with popularity just because it exists and might have a small edge on the competition. Except in this case, Fire Phone didn't even have an edge. Still, I'm convinced that even if it had been better than the iPhone (or whichever best Android phone) in almost every way, it still would have been doomed for failure. No one brags about getting the Walmart version of something. The same could be said for Amazon. I do respect the company's efforts to take "bold" risks. I also really want Amazon to succeed - I'm a very happy Prime and AWS customer, and I think their hardware is actually pretty good. I just wonder if the big bets would be better placed on products and services that better align with the brand they've created already.
- aslewofmice 12y ago
  I think they could succeed by modeling themselves after a Costco/Kirkland-type relationship
  - mrxd 12y ago
    Or any other of the popular value brands like Ikea, Target, Old Navy, Southwest, H&M or Honda. Amazon is perceived as utilitarian, but that's not inevitable for a value retailer. There's a fundamental mismatch. Jeff Bezos wants to be perceived as cool, cutting edge, an explorer, an innovator. These are elitist concepts that work for a premium, aspirational brand. Value brands need to come across as ordinary people.
serve_yay 12y ago
It was a huge flop, but I wonder how much of a problem that really is for Amazon. They'll keep trying until they hit something that works for them. And they don't make their revenue from devices - a phone flopping would be an unmitigated disaster for Apple. For Amazon I'm not sure why it's anything more than a slight embarrassment. (Well, I guess a series of flops could damage their brand to the point that future efforts are doomed simply by association. That would be bad.) The article seems to be making the point that this is an indicator of something wrong at Amazon but I am extremely skeptical of that. I think they just try stuff and see what works.
programminggeek 12y ago
My feeling on the Fire phone was just that they build the wrong phone for their audience. They built the Moto X when they should have built the Moto G. There is a market for a really solid Android phone for say $150 off contract. Amazon could have partnered with any number of prepaid providers and also normal providers to have "the best deal in wireless". They built a whole market around driving down prices and reaching a mass audience, then they compete with top end phones. If the Kindle Fire was $500, it would have flopped. The $600 Fire Phone DID flop. It feels like Kindle tech's value proposition is quality technology at an unbeatable price. The Fire Phone didn't hit that at all.
- nailer 12y ago
  The Moto X is a genuinely good phone though, the Fire phone is awful. But yes, everyone expected and wanted a Moto G type phone.
TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
I'm surprised at how clueless the Fire phone is described to be, given that the Amazon products I am familiar with (Kindle, various AWS services, Prime, Instant Video) are actually rather good.
jayess 12y ago
So one product didn't pan out during its first iteration. Not exactly the end of the world. This also makes me wonder if they are rolling out the Echo the way they are because of Fire Phone. Invitation only and a (presumably) demand-driven supply chain.
- throwawaymsft 12y ago
  It's not that they can't make an occasional mistake, it's that they can misjudge things so poorly. What were they expecting people to do with this device? ("Oh man, I'll give up my iPhone and its ecosystem so I can get 3d home screen.") Kindle, echo, etc. were decent in their first iteration and provided some value.
bambax 12y ago
> When Bezos insisted that the original 2007 Kindle include a cellular connection so customers could download and access e-books from anywhere, people thought the idea was an exorbitant flourish (...) When Bezos encouraged a free-shipping initiative, executives pushed back, nervous about its impact on earnings. (...) So when it came to the Fire Phone, says one former product lead, "Yes, there was heated debate about whether it was heading in the right direction. But at a certain point, you just think, ‘Well, this guy has been right so many times before.’" It must be extremely hard/impossible to challenge Jeff Bezos when you're... well when you're not him. However, the examples given here of Jeff being right, are about features that benefit customers (at a cost that some people thought was too high). But the problem with the 3-D functionality wasn't that it was costing the company too much. It was that nobody could figure out how it would be useful -- at any cost for Amazon, or the customer. I remember the videos promoting the Fire phone with random people saying "wow"... they reminded me of the Windows Vista videos, with random people looking out their window and staring at deer in the morning sun. If you have to pay actors to say "wow" in a video maybe there's a problem.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Right on - the biggest (and IMO only truly relevant) reason why the Fire Phone flopped is because it doesn't benefit customers. The Fire Phone wasn't built to be a superior phone, or give customers something truly new and useful. It was built to be an Amazon Content Delivery Device. This is a phone whose primary raison d'etre is to get people to buy more stuff from Amazon. It's a distillation of a platform strategy, not the desire to produce a genuine product. Until Amazon starts coming at this with the primary goal of producing a greater, better phone - and the goal of selling more Amazon content a distant second - they will keep failing.
  - tiglionabbit 12y ago
    I'm not sure what having so many cameras has to do with that.
    - rancur 12y ago
guiomie 12y ago
"When Bezos insisted that the original 2007 Kindle include a cellular connection so customers could download and access e-books from anywhere, people thought the idea was an exorbitant flourish that would eat into profits. But his prescience was part of what made the Kindle a smash hit." ... Really? Anyone can back this up? I would have thought the opposite. I didn't buy the 3G Kindle because it was more exepensive, all I cared was the eink display.
- mynameishere 12y ago
  Yes, it's pretty neat. I have an old kindle refurb and just now (as a test) ordered a free public domain book and it took about 2 seconds to show up. I think the whole point of that feature was to capture the airport book market--people facing a four hour flight have a million books to choose from instead of fifty rubbishy paperbacks.
- tdicola 12y ago
  Ancecdotal, but I remember when the original Kindle came out I thought exactly that. Who would want to pay more money just so you can buy a book when you're sitting at a park or coffee shop? Just give me a device I can tether to my computer and load in books like it's iTunes. The beauty of the cell connection was that it got rid of all the pain of putting stuff on the device. My parents had no idea how to get music on an iPod, but they could easily click a buy button on Amazon.com and see their book on the Kindle within moments like it was magic.
- tonyarkles 12y ago
  I've got an old 3G kindle (bought second hand). It's a feature I don't really think about until I'm out at the cabin and feel like reading a book I bought a while ago. Tada! Super cool feature, although I'm not sure I would have paid extra for it when I was considering a kindle initially.
fidotron 12y ago
I think the missing piece of discussion here is what's alluded to in the article: Amazon, or at least a critical mass of decision makers at Amazon, want to become aspirational. It really is in the same category of Costco or Walmart, but they constantly wish they could go higher end for higher margins. The Fire Phone is a demonstration of what happens when these two worlds collide. It is a box shifter's definition of a high end phone. I admire Amazon a lot, but this one was a misfire.
taigeair 12y ago
interesting insights on the PMing process
ursidae 12y ago
For an example of the phone Amazon should have built, check out the Yotaphone 2: https://yotaphone.com/gb-en/ https://yotaphone.com/gb-en/ Wonder if Amazon could buy them?
- yid 12y ago
  Wow, did not know about that! What a shame that Amazon didn't go with the dual e-ink/LCD idea, given that they're practically singlehandedly responsible for e-ink going mainstream. Throw in free-with-Prime, Android, and a few carrier discounts (e.g. free data for a year) and I'd happily dump my iPhone in a heartbeat.
  - scott_karana 12y ago
    > Throw in ... Android Huh? The Yotaphone already runs Android, and not an Amazon-crippled version at that. :)
  - m_mueller 12y ago
    Shouldn't it be possible to create an e-ink display behind a transparent LCD? Then you wouldn't need to flip anything anymore. I'm guessing that the backlight might be a problem, but maybe that could be integrated with the e-ink as well.
- kevinqi 12y ago
  what a cool idea. It's hard to know how the user experience is without using it (eg. do you have to flip it back and forth manually often?), but the benefits of having an e-ink panel seems huge.
blisterpeanuts 12y ago
In my opinion, Amazon should have gone with a generic budget phone to augment their "Amazon Basics" line of dependable, economical cables, USB hubs, and so forth. I would make it a plain, vanilla Nexus-like phone running vanilla Android with no skins and not tied to any contracts or carriers, but priced $50 less than a comparable Nexus 5 or whatever is the current Nexus. Or else, make it about $400 but throw in a year of Prime to sweeten the deal. Maybe add a couple of features to distinguish it, such as a microSD memory expansion port. Forget the lame Amazon AppStore, or at least provide both -- AppStore and Google Play, and let the customer choose. Such a device might not sell 20 million units in the first week, but it would sell a heck of a lot better than the Fire Phone did. Heck, I would have bought one. I went with a Nexus 5 just a couple of months ago, after the very pricey Nexus 6 was announced. There's a good market for a vanilla, plain Android phone, and Prime would make it a no-brainer. The article makes Bezos sound a bit over-controlling and zany, but at least the author hastens to add that second guessing Bezos and Amazon is a risky business. Who knows? Perhaps the Fire 2 will get it right. (I hope Jeff's reading this!)
- nilkn 12y ago
  > I would make it a plain, vanilla Nexus-like phone running vanilla Android with no skins and not tied to any contracts or carriers, but priced $50 less than a comparable Nexus 5 or whatever is the current Nexus. Or else, make it about $400 but throw in a year of Prime to sweeten the deal. Maybe add a couple of features to distinguish it, such as a microSD memory expansion port. Forget the lame Amazon AppStore, or at least provide both -- AppStore and Google Play, and let the customer choose. If they'd actually done this, it'd probably be a pretty good competitor to the Nexus 6, which is not a bad phone at all but departed quite a bit from the precedent of the Nexus 5, other than running stock Android. (Huge, very expensive.) The Android market is ripe for a true successor of the Nexus 5, and Amazon would have made a lot of sense to fill that niche. The best thing we've got right now is the 2014 Moto X, which admittedly is a very good phone.
  - soylentcola 12y ago
    Yep. The power button on my Nexus 5 just went up and I had the choice of throwing money at a 14-month-old phone (which is a bit sooner than I had hoped to replace it but old enough that I had to think twice about paying for maintenance) or buying a new phone. Nexus 6 at $650 and in a larger form factor than I would like got me to buy a Moto X instead. $200 cheaper and in a more reasonable size made it the closest thing to a Nexus 5 replacement I ran across. I would have gladly considered something from Amazon if it had been along the lines of an updated Nexus 5 (under $400, stock or virtually stock like the Moto X) even if, like the Nexus line, it sacrificed a bit of that premium "Cadillac" polish like the wooden back and metal edged frame. Only reason I even bothered with that is because there wasn't a cheaper Nexus that wasn't the year+ old N5. Hell...don't even bundle gapps if you want to include the Amazon store...just as long as someone can build AOSP for it and I can install it myself. When the Nexus 7 came out it was roughly equivalent to the Kindle Fire in terms of price and specs but other than fellow Android fans and tech site readers, I didn't know anyone else who bought a Nexus 7. Everyone I knew who wanted an affordable (read: cheaper than an iPad) but functional small tablet bought Kindle Fires so clearly their brand awareness and marketing is worth something if people were willing to buy an slightly inferior device for $50 more.
aetherson 12y ago
This article really reminded me how much Apple screwed up to let Android get a foothold. Look how unassailable the Apple and Android are now -- you can't get a foothold at the bottom of the market because it's hugely fragmented and there are no profit margins, while at the top of the market you're taking on beloved brands and have to try crazy over-the-top bets to get in the door -- which usually backfire. Android could have been the Fire Phone of its day. The earliest Android phones were just amazingly bad compared to the iPhone. But iPhones were only available on AT&T. Do you live in an area where AT&T had no service? Your only choice was an Android. iPhones insisted for years on having exactly one clearly unpopular screen size. Want a 4" screen? Your only choice was an Android. Apple refused to develop a downmarket phone. Want something less than a flagship? Your only choice was an Android. That window has closed. iOS has finally filled in all the places it used to suck (well, maybe except for developing an economical model, but last year's phone looks better now than it used to, and in any case Android filled that niche to the overflowing).
- Spooky23 12y ago
  Well, good for us. Without Android, the iPhone would suck. We finally have the competition everyone wished for in the Windows 98 days.
- fpgeek 12y ago
  Apple didn't screw up. The disadvantages you cite are inevitable consequences of the strategy they consciously chose (selling premium devices differentiated by user experience). If Apple hadn't waited until carriers (especially Verizon) to come to them, iPhones would be as full of branding and bloatware as any other carrier-sold phone, not to mention interference with updates, interference with retail launches and who knows what else. Limiting the range of phones they offer means they miss niches, but also helps control costs (allowing them to use premium components more affordably), simplifies the buying process for customers, supports a broader and deeper accessory ecosystem and so on. Not jumping on many new technologies (e.g. LTE), creates an opening for competitors, but also lets Apple avoid the associated growing pains so they can provide a more consistent user experience. If Apple had followed the path you advocate, they'd have picked up many of the disadvantages of the Android ecosystem, without the corresponding advantages (most notably rapid improvements via intra-ecosystem competition). That seems obviously worse than the path they actually chose.
deleted 12y ago
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kbrwn 12y ago
E-ink is what made Amazon a device company. Copying the Yota phone seems like it would have been a better bet then going with the 3D gimmick. Yota has a really interesting product but hasn't really gained support due to a few issues (there isn't really Android SDK support for e-ink screens) that Amazon could have easily solved.
PaulHoule 12y ago
Hey everybody wants to sell a $700 flagship phone since the profit is so high the trouble is does anybody want it?
varunjuice 12y ago
Amazon should've focussed on an inexpensive handset with Amazon services for shopping built in to it, and launched it in emerging markets. This would give it a shot to get to the next billion. Heck, it could've even provided free data if a user does a certain amount of shopping on Amazon a month.
bsclifton 12y ago
>"We’re trying to break the mold of how TV has been made for the last 75 years," Amazon Studios content chief Joe Lewis explained, before dropping a familiar Bezos trope: "It’s still Day One." At least cable TV has a way to deliver most of the content consumers want, even if it sucks and is overpriced. Further fragmenting the market with Yet Another Marketplace in the quest to regain that 30% only hurts the consumer IMO. I personally want nothing to do with locking myself into an ecosystem. Apple, Google and Amazon will never see my cash for eco-system specific purchases.
saosebastiao 12y ago
This has classic Amazon politics written all over it. I'm pretty far removed from anything Kindle/Fire related, but this was my best guess at what happened based off of the Amazon I know: Jeff said make a phone (probably like 5 years ago). They pulled orgs apart and mashed them into this superorg with several VPs and dozens of Directors, with the software teams in Seattle but the hardware folks in a completely different city, and then told them to work it out. In the course of working it out, the hundreds of cooks elbowing each other in the overcrowded kitchen resulted in delay after delay, with the final feature set being a mashup of 40 different director's flagship bullshit-o-tron that they expect to be promoted for (OMG...everybody is gonna think useless 3D stuff that kills the battery is so coool...I can't wait to be reporting directly to Jeff!!!). Come crunch time, the product managers all schedule their SDEs to show up to a 2 hour meeting so they can discuss the same exact plan to ship on time that they discussed yesterday for 2 hours. Now that it is a dud, nobody wants to touch it, so all the Directors/VPs migrate laterally to different orgs (or quit) and then rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, the bug list grows bigger by the day, a handful of software engineers go crazypants optimization on a non-bottleneck feature, and all the sane people just hope for a day where we can forget about it all and focus on some other new whizburger.
- puredemo 12y ago
  That sounds pretty different from the scenario the article outlined, with Bezos working directly as the product manager..
  - m_mueller 12y ago
    Let's not get facts in the way of a good story though..
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  I really like Amazon externally, they do some things very well. But I don't know how they keep running.
- technofiend 12y ago
  Sounds about right. There's only room for one iconoclast at Amazon: anyone showing resistance to the crazy ideas Jeff came up with would be shown the door. You just don't understand, man: Jeff has a ...vision... and he's never been wrong!. It may be time for a strong board of directors who can reign in the ego a little before we get any more projects reminiscent of Lucas' later films.
CamperBob2 12y ago
But will all of Bezos’s risk-taking ultimately pay off? "They make no money!" former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer exclaimed in a recent TV interview. "In my world, [that’s] not a real business. I get it if you don’t make money for two or three years, but Amazon is, what, 21 years old?" I don't know many people who have made money betting against Jeff Bezos, or lost it betting against Steve Ballmer. (iPhone, anyone?)
blueskin_ 12y ago
As son as I saw the fire phone, I knew it'd fail. It's an Android phone without any of Android's advantages, weak hardware, and the only purposes it seemed to serve is to facilitate users buying more stuff from amazon (imagine that!).
minusSeven 12y ago
I haven't seen the fire phone yet but isn't it too early to say its a disaster. They have only just entered the market and are obviously going to get better.
osehgol 12y ago
despite the criticism it has some seriously cool features like firefly and 'MayDay'. Not everything has to gel in with the consumer right away. He's casting the net far and wide, and keeping his foot in the devices game. That's awesome.
noisy_boy 12y ago
When it comes to phones, Amazon was in a great situation. It didn't have any baggage in terms of older models. No risk of cannibalizing existing models if the new phone is superior. It completely knew the strenghts and weaknesses of its competitors. All it had to do is plug the weaknesses and provide something which is superior. Something whose uniqueness lies not in useless 3-D gimmicks but solid features which other leaders are overlooking. For example: 1. Provide a truely great display. This is not necessarily to trump others but something which is just a must. The display is the face of the phone. 2. Provide two SD card slots. Which market leading phone has them? None. With 2x128 GB sdcards (which also happen to be sold by Amazon) and say, 64 GB internal storage, the user gets 320GB of storage. On a phone. Unique? Yes. Useful? Hell yes. 3. Provide two SIM card slots. Granted, there are a whole bunch of phones that provide them but usually not in a phone with 320GB storage. 4. Massive 4000mAh battery. Make the phone slightly bigger, say 5.5 inches to manage heat. As numerous very successful large phones have proven, a big display is not a bad thing for a lot of people. Without getting into the drawbacks of not latching into the Play Store ecosystem, the hardware i.e. the product itself would have generated so much positive buzz. Unfortunately, focusing on solid and useful features is often overlooked and in case of Amazon, it squandered a great opportunity.
- untog 12y ago
  Provide two SD card slots. Which market leading phone has them? None. Because people don't want them. Very few people would use or want 320GB of storage on their phone. Provide two SIM card slots. Also a feature only wanted by a tiny minority of users. If Amazon made the phone you describe it would be a huge hit with a tiny minority of users. They'd be passionate about it, but the vast majority if people wouldn't care.
umbs 12y ago
"In October, Amazon shocked shareholders when it reported a $437 million net loss for the quarter, its biggest in 14 years." Please pardon my ignorance on Accounting. I don't have basic Accounting 101 knowledge, but please help me understand this. If I, as an individual, loose certain amount of money, it is most likely from my savings. Otherwise, it must be on my credit card, which means, I lost the bank's money. Eventually, I need to repay. How can a company that hasn't made much profit over the years, loose $437 million? If it hasn't made profit, it has no savings. Clearly 'someone' is giving Amazon credit. I assume its the investors. But in what form does Amazon borrow money? Does Amazon issue bonds and raise money? Does it issue more shares/stock? In short, how is Amazon getting so much money and loosing it in each quarter. Any links to read will also be helpful.
- stickfigure 12y ago
  When people say Amazon is not profitable, they mean "not very profitable". With their enormous revenue, they still generate enough money to maintain a pile of billions of dollars: http://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/cash_on_hand http://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/cash_on_hand (found by googling for "amazon cash on hand")

233 points by czr80 12y ago

comrh 12y ago

Makes you wonder why any company would get into hardware.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

>"it now sells for 99 cents" (OP) // Where can I get one for 99c, in UK on ebay [new] they're about £200 (~$300) on O2 network or £250 unlocked. Lowest monthly for a contract is £28.

pja 12y ago
I'm going to guess that's 99c on contract. So not really 99c at all.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  Exactly, it's a stupid thing to say. It currently sells for "$450 on a 2 year contract" - this is why people end up paying insane amounts for mobile phones. "Have you seen my phone, it was free." [ie £45 a month for 2 years]
delecti 12y ago
The other commenter is correct, it's $0.99 with a 2 year contract to ATT. It's $450 off-contract, though it was briefly $200 off-contract late last year.
bunderbunder 12y ago
It says that's the price with a contract. So it's not really $0.99, it's $0.99 plus a monthly installment you agree to pay over the next two years, which will be rolled into the rest of your wireless service charge. US cellular providers have very opaque pricing so it's hard to tell how much those installments really are. But usually when you have the option to buy a phone with or without a contract, the spread's $400-$500. That strongly implies the real price is about $401-$501, amortized over 24 months. Long story short, using the perverse mathematics of United States mobile phone pricing, the £200 you're finding is about 3/4 of the $0.99 the article says Americans are paying.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  I quoted the article. It does make a correction of sorts at the end. The full sentence: >"Originally priced at $199 (with contract) and intended as an iPhone competitor, it now sells for 99 cents, and Amazon has taken a $170 million write-down largely attributable to unsold Fire Phone inventory."* // So they are comparing '99c' to '$199 (with contract)'. Meh, I should know better than to expect realistic reporting. [to avoid any doubt I'm not disagreeing with you in any way]
andybak 12y ago
What I don't get about US pricings is that the phone price stays constant whatever the contract. In the UK a phone might be free on a £45/month contract, £100 on a £30/month contract and so on. Does that not appen in the US?
- jzwinck 12y ago
  In the US there are generally only two levels: the subsidized price and the full price. If you get a phone with a very cheap contract, you will have to pay full price, just as if you got no contract at all. Such people might therefore prefer a prepaid plan. If you get a phone with a "normal" (in UK terms, "expensive") plan, you get the subsidized price for the phone. There's usually no gradation beyond that...although people who spend huge amounts of money on their monthly bills due to long distance calling, roaming, etc., will receive extra promotions (we're talking $1000/month customers).
- dsr_ 12y ago
  It used to be that you paid for the phone, then you paid for service. You can still do that, if you're prepared to pay $400-$1000 for a phone. (Except Google's Nexus 4 was reasonably priced.) But the usual method for the last decade was that you paid for a 24 month contract, and pay a lump up front that paid for the differentiation of the low-end phones (free, or 99c, or $50) from the high end phones ($100 - $300). The rest of the price was invisibly wrapped into the contract -- and there would likely be a hefty early termination fee if you wanted to walk away from the contract. Recently, phone companies have been trying to extract even more money by offering a non-contract service contract (cancel any time, no fee) along with a rent-to-own plan on the phone (pay a chunk up front, then after 24 payments it's yours.) For some reason this does not result in a discount for the service plan...

blhack 12y ago

I wonder if we'll ever see on-demand assembly of stuff like this. Amazon doesn't have to invest anything into phones that might not get sold, just "raw materials" that get assembled into phones on demand in their fullfillment centers. Any unassmbled processors, screens, cameras, etc. just get sold back onto the market if the phone doesn't gain success.

ansible 12y ago
I wonder if we'll ever see on-demand assembly of stuff like this. That is and has been done. Like for the Moto X, which is custom assembled if you do a custom order. However, there is a substantial ongoing cost to keep a manufacturing line up and running for a product. If you're not currently running phones (or whatever product) every day, then you'd want to use the line space for other products. This implies setup / teardown costs and (re)training. In general, the manufacturer would prefer to start running the product at some given volume per day, be given plenty of notice to scale up or down the volume, and then cease production and be done with it. That minimizes their costs.

bengali3 12y ago

> As an investor you have to ask yourself, Is this company doing too many things? I'd be more inclined to ask: Are they winning at enough things? If no, then are they doing enough things? One of my favorite quotes that I gathered last year is from Jeff: "Risk is a necessary component of progress"

sekasi 12y ago

Bold or irresponsible move? Not sure. Given the incredibly low profit margin of most non-iphone smartphones on the market today (I think the average samsung profit margin on a phone is $11) I can't help but wonder what the real source of revenue was planned to be. Increased shopping through mobile? Make your android/ios products better? It just never made any sense, but I guess many successful products don't make initial sense either.

megaultra 12y ago
Of course it's for increased shopping through mobile. My daughter bought a Kindle and she admitted her ebook purchases have increased tenfold. Others have told me similar. I'm deathly afraid to get one for the same reason. Frictionless purchases and vertical channel integration makes perfect sense to me.
- sekasi 12y ago
  Do you require a whole new device for frictionless shopping? I'm not so convinced that's the case.
- elarkin 12y ago
  My ebook purchases also skyrocketed after I got a Kindle. But it didn't rise because the kindle made it easy to buy ebooks, or even because I prefer ebooks (for technical stuff, I actually don't). It's because I was reading a lot more. I went from 1 or 2 books a year (if even) to 1 to 2 books a week. My experience is anecdotal, but it might be worthwhile to ask your acquaintances why they buy so many ebooks after buying a Kindle.
rhino369 12y ago
More and more digital content consumption is happening on mobile devices. And Amazon can't sell on iOS devices because Apple locks out anyone who won't pay a 30% ransom. You can't buy a book or rent an instant movie on an iPhone. It is a big weak spot.
- jlarocco 12y ago

pbreit 12y ago

I don't get the Fire phone at all. iPhone users are never going to switch to it. Can't see Android users switching either. I appreciate that they tried some new things such as Firefly (although that is apparently available on iOS/Android, as it should be), the gestures and some of the other UI differences. But the 3D stuff is lame and the overall aesthetic is dreadful. The Kindle is apparently doing well and makes perfect sense. And 2 of my new favorite gadgets are Fire TV (vocal search is the way to go) and Echo (very well done an a no-brainer at $99). ps I got my Fire phone for $199 no-contract with free year of Prime ($99 net unlocked).

patja 12y ago
The Kindle does so many things right but like many of Amazon's products leaves me shaking my head and asking "what are they thinking?" Case in point is the Special Offers, or ads shown on the Kindle. Initially I kind of liked them, especially when they would occasionally just throw you $5 off your next Kindle purchase or make me aware of new books. But the lack of targeting became so annoying. I had so many ads for titles I already purchased for the Kindle, and so many annoying ads for things like toilet paper and home security monitoring that I lost quite a bit of respect for Amazon and the utter lack of optimization they did around Special Offers.
- eropple 12y ago
  They are thinking that they are making a somewhat cheaper device for people who don't have the capacity to lose respect for a corporation over a lack of ad-targeting. I'm pretty sure they're right.
  - sofal 12y ago
    You say that as if it were some kind of moral failing. I bought the version with ads not because I want to be specially targeted by ads, but because it was cheaper and the ads are not intrusive and don't bother me. I use my Kindle to read books, not to get shopping tips. The only reason an ad would annoy me is if it intruded on my attention while I'm reading my book. They can try to sell me pink panties while it's off for all I care. If they're not targeting correctly, that's their problem, and it is no skin off my nose.

jph 12y ago

The Fire phone is a gorgeous hardware success in my opinion -- if you try it, it's fast and sleek. The Firefly scanner is super-convenient for shopping. The show-stopper issue for me is the UI. It feels as if screen elements are sloshing, or hard to find, and the UI is hard to use when I'm in motion. I expect the UI will be easy for Amazon to solve. The phone is a version 1 and a strong debut -- even if it didn't sell well.

EpicEng 12y ago
> ...and a strong debut -- even if it didn't sell well. I'm not sure one follows from the other... how exactly did the Fire make a "strong debut"?
killface 12y ago
Someone who isn't me helped work on this portion of the project. The system UI was written and re-written a half dozen times. They tried to do it internally, they tried design agencies, they tried consultants, and all failed miserably. Not because they sucked, but because the Amazon management team was nearly impossible to deal with. Developers would get conflicting requirements from multiple stakeholders, who would then argue like children. You had managers who would throw a tantrum if they didn't get a pet feature in. Etc, etc. The last I heard, they basically downloaded the android OS, and re-wrote all of the system UI framework components. Of course, this meant that most android apps broke because they failed to make all of the options functional, so they spent somewhere around twice the time fixing issues as they did writing them.

devindotcom 12y ago

When I attended the launch, they had a hands-on period where I noticed a few of the issues people have pointed out in reviews. But every phone has issues. More worryingly, I asked about a few things that the unique tech in the Fire Phone could be used for - nothing groundbreaking, just little suggestions: "It'd be great to have the tilt controls do ____ here" or "Do you have plans to allow users to turn this on/off?" Things like that. Almost all were met with a "wow, no, I don't think so, we haven't looked into that at all." I don't mean to suggest I'm some sort of UX genius or anything, these were just ordinary features one would expect to have been considered (and possibly rejected) based on everything Apple, Google, and Microsoft have done to advance the state of the art. Amazon hadn't given a moment's thought to any of them! Combined with the other stuff they tend to do in their original hardware, it cemented my thoughts that there's some kind of weird naivete pervading their entire hardware process, and no one to even recognize it, much less address it. I was pretty sure from the second I was given the phone to hold that it would be a dud, but felt it was possible that ingenuity might save the day. Unfortunately not the case, and it's too bad because there's so much cool stuff in there!

ctdonath 12y ago
No power switch (even soft)? Really?
- MadManE 12y ago
  I think he was speaking to turning the features on and off, not the phone. At least, that's how I read it.
  - devindotcom 12y ago
    Yes, I was kind of imagining pointing to something on the phone when I wrote that, which of course did not come through in the comment...
- maratd 12y ago
  It has a power button ...

SwellJoe 12y ago

I have a Fire Phone. I couldn't resist, when they were $199 and include a year of Prime (which I already pay for), it's $100 for a quite high end piece of hardware. And, the hardware actually is really great. Camera is great, display is great, touchscreen is great. 2GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. It's very high end phone hardware at a very low end phone price. That said, it's an awful phone. The OS feels clunky and old. The 3D stuff is, as mentioned in the article, gimmicky and pointless. Firefly is just annoying (it seemingly pops up at random, as if to say, "Hey, wanna buy something? You should totally buy something."). The interface, where it has diverged from Android, is confusing as hell. Menus pop up when you rock the phone, or shake it, or something, I dunno. It just randomly pops stuff up sometimes and I don't know why or how to replicate it. The status bar is disabled by default and the launch screen is more limited and frustrating than the original launch screen on the G1 (the first Android devices). Camera comes up every time I try to adjust the volume because the buttons are right next to each other. This also seems to be a trigger for Firefly...maybe. I honestly don't know how Firefly is called into existence, but it's popped up dozens of times since I've owned the phone, none of which were times I wanted it. Amazon built the phone Amazon wanted. It's not a phone designed around customer needs/wants, at all. They even pulled out a bunch of functionality for seemingly no reason other than they want people to buy more things from Amazon. For example, you can't use your music on the device as a ring tone or alarm (a feature that has existed in Android approximately forever). But, Amazon will sell you ring tones. It is possible to sideload the Google Play Store, which is one redeeming characteristic of the phone...so, I have GMail, Firefox browser (which is not in the Amazon store, but can also be sideloaded), calendar, docs, etc. But, it's still not a pleasant phone experience. The UI is needlessly opaque, and the unique features of the phone are pointless or annoying. The unique features are also not at all discoverable. I didn't know Firefly could recognize music and art, that's kinda neat. I don't know how to use any of the buttons and movements to make the phone do things. They seem nearly random when I try to use those features, which is quite frustrating. I gave it, I think a 3 star review, at Amazon, on the strength of the hardware, the very low price, and the fact that Google Play Store can be sideloaded relatively easily. But, I would never recommend it for someone who isn't a tinkerer. It's just too confusing, and the native apps (for email, maps, etc.) are weak. Edit: And perhaps the most frustrating thing is that there is no back button. You have to do a swipe gesture from the bottom (the very bottom, or it scrolls instead) of the display. I sometimes find myself having to attempt this a half dozen times to make it work. It is incredibly frustrating; and worse, I find myself doing it on my Nexus 7 (which has a back button and doesn't respond to this gesture). It's training me to be their kinda stupid.

ninv 12y ago

Jeff should spilit the Amazon in to two companies, Amazon.com and Amazon Research Labs. Amazon.com will be the old Amazon and he can continue his "copy the latest gadget or trend" in Amazon Research Labs. I think he should shut down everything and focus on AWS and Amazon.com only.

RyJones 12y ago
Hardware is developed at lab126.com.
sonoffett 12y ago
They do have research labs, eg lab 126 and a9.

chuckcode 12y ago

With apple charging 30% of revenue [1] for in app purchases I'm sure that Bezos and others will continue to be concerned about the platform as well as the content. Might be a better strategy to partner with android than start a new ecosystem but I'm sure they want to have more control over the platform. [1] http://www.macstories.net/stories/a-discussion-about-apples-unsatisfactory-in-app-purchase-policies/ http://www.macstories.net/stories/a-discussion-about-apples-...

aroch 12y ago
Google[1] and Amazon[2] also charge 30%... [1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... >You receive 70% of the payment [2] http://gameservices.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/inapppurchasing.html http://gameservices.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/inapp... >developers earn 70 percent
- minthd 12y ago
  Google gives the app developer to use other in-app payments means, to save the fee.
- chuckcode 12y ago
  As stated in the original article I reference [1] and the google play developer policies [2] google/android has exceptions for goods that can be used on other devices like amazon prime movies, music, magazines, etc. That is why you can't buy new movies etc. in the amazon app on iPhone but you can on Android. In either case it is clear that the owners of the platform don't want it to turn into a commodity like the rest of the web and want a slice of all revenue. That means that amazon will need to have more leverage over the platform and devices. [1] http://www.macstories.net/stories/a-discussion-about-apples-unsatisfactory-in-app-purchase-policies/ http://www.macstories.net/stories/a-discussion-about-apples-... [2] https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html

andrewmutz 12y ago

It is extremely difficult for large organizations to create the sort of innovative leaps that startups can create. Amazon is attempting to do this. They have been successful in many different ways, but for every winner they create they need to create multiple losers. The fire phone seems to be one of these losers, but time will tell. I really admire Amazon's tolerance for failure. Most large companies would never take such risks.

discodave 12y ago
Another way of thinking about it is that it is extremely difficult for startups to create successful innovative leaps since most of them fail. Amazon is more like a VC fund or an incubator than one individual startup. What's the 2014 revenue of all YC companies combined? That would be a good number to compare Amazons revenue to.
Rimpinths 12y ago
What you should really admire is Amazon's shareholders' tolerance for failure. A lot more companies would be more likely to take big risks like Amazon if their shareholders would tolerate year after year of losses. Time will tell if they are stupid or admirable.

throwaway1x7q 12y ago

I was there for a year. On that team. This article is quite inaccurate.

anindyabd 12y ago
You were on the Fire Phone team? Fascinating. Care to elaborate on some of the inaccuracies?
- throwaway1x7q 12y ago
  Yes i was on the original team, before [almost] everyone walked out. see below
fosk 12y ago
Can you elaborate why it's inaccurate?
- throwaway1x7q 12y ago
  - team was not scrapped by jeff, at least not until large number of people walked out due to mismanagement - prototypes that worked (and were of phone size & shape) existed more than 2 years before launch but then (as mentioned) team walked and it all had to be scrapped - hw team often undercut sw team by replacing components and not telling anyone about it - hw team often made mistakes of the very basic variety (two separate sets of pull-ups on a single i2c bus) - some parts choices were motivated by personal interests of people in the hw team, even against their own data & analyses. This was allowed to proceed - some of the management made the team look very foolish in front of vendors (asking questions that made no sense in the current millennium) - sw team was kept busy by endless meetings with no end in sight, which significantly cut into any chance of productivity
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    > "- sw team was kept busy by endless meetings with no end in sight, which significantly cut into any chance of productivity" Sounds like Amazon alright. I was there for two years and this defined so much of my time spent. We'd have endless meetings with endless stakeholders. This would cut deeply into development time, and all scheduling revolved around PM schedules with no regard for the productivity cost of pulling engineers into meetings every other hour, all day long. Which would of course result in more meetings to discuss why we're not shipping things quickly enough, and more meetings to remediate the situation... By the time I left that godforsaken wasteland of a tech company I was easily doing ~3 hours of meetings in a given day, all spread out naturally, because fuck concentrating and getting work done.

marcusgarvey 12y ago

>Clearly, Amazon isn’t yet on the same side of the "loved" spectrum as the brands Bezos named in his memo. Devoted fans of Apple, Nike, and Disney will spend any amount of money just for a small taste of their products and culture. Amazon certainly isn’t in the same camp as supposedly "unloved" brands like Walmart—far from it. But Amazon just isn’t as cool or beloved as Bezos might hope. People also fall out of love, as they have done at one point or another with many of the examples mentioned here. Be essential, that' s much better.

VLM 12y ago

Amazon's simplified big picture strategy is the application of perfect execution to dominate a market. They're really good at it. They optimize the whole process from the website, to the box magically appearing at my door two days later. For books and food and ebooks and "stuff" in general, I find that ability to perfectly execute rather important, and they get lots of my business. They're the kings of detail orientation. Process failure is not an option. They thought they could execute perfectly on designing and shipping phones. I believe they can. The problem is the market for phones doesn't care about flawless execution. Legendarily the existing network providers suck and the existing phones aren't too great either but people love them anyway and never make their buying decisions based on who's most likely to ship on time or least likely to crash. They would fail exactly the same way if they tried to sell fast food or American cars or car insurance, where nobody cares about quality and only want low price. They would be a huge success in something like medical supply logistics (don't they already sell stuff like that?) or aerospace (spaceX better look out) The challenge for them is trying to sell perfect logistics, perfect performance, perfect execution in general to markets where people currently really don't care. I think they are running out of consumer markets that they don't already dominate where people care about flawless execution. Its interesting that all the stuff I use with my phone comes from Amazon. Case, bluetooth ear piece, BT headphones, charger, cable... I'd even buy a phone from them, although I'd buy the phone I want, not a fire. Also note they're good at shipping a variety but not good at making anything. I never want Amazon's XYZ, ever. I want an XYZ, and Amazon is the best in the business at getting a XYZ delivered to me.

dperfect 12y ago

Amazon seems to have truly become the Walmart of e-commerce, and I'm not just talking about what the company does (commerce), but rather what the brand represents. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Walmart and Amazon have proven that if you dominate the supply chain landscape and offer a huge variety with low margins, you can do moderately well (i.e. stay in business). But with so much being essentially commodity goods and services (physical and digital), you really can't expect higher margins. So Amazon lives on, even after 20 years in the business. But with that much history and branding (intentional and unintentional), you really can't expect to create demand for your own premium products - competing with companies that have spent the same amount of time (decades) marketing themselves as design-driven, high quality, premium brands. It appears that Amazon expects to pull a complete 180 with their brand overnight, as if a product itself (if it's "cool enough") can negate and rise above 20 years of commodity reseller branding. Sounds a bit like the lone hacker who expects their next mobile app to explode with popularity just because it exists and might have a small edge on the competition. Except in this case, Fire Phone didn't even have an edge. Still, I'm convinced that even if it had been better than the iPhone (or whichever best Android phone) in almost every way, it still would have been doomed for failure. No one brags about getting the Walmart version of something. The same could be said for Amazon. I do respect the company's efforts to take "bold" risks. I also really want Amazon to succeed - I'm a very happy Prime and AWS customer, and I think their hardware is actually pretty good. I just wonder if the big bets would be better placed on products and services that better align with the brand they've created already.

aslewofmice 12y ago
I think they could succeed by modeling themselves after a Costco/Kirkland-type relationship
- mrxd 12y ago
  Or any other of the popular value brands like Ikea, Target, Old Navy, Southwest, H&M or Honda. Amazon is perceived as utilitarian, but that's not inevitable for a value retailer. There's a fundamental mismatch. Jeff Bezos wants to be perceived as cool, cutting edge, an explorer, an innovator. These are elitist concepts that work for a premium, aspirational brand. Value brands need to come across as ordinary people.

serve_yay 12y ago

It was a huge flop, but I wonder how much of a problem that really is for Amazon. They'll keep trying until they hit something that works for them. And they don't make their revenue from devices - a phone flopping would be an unmitigated disaster for Apple. For Amazon I'm not sure why it's anything more than a slight embarrassment. (Well, I guess a series of flops could damage their brand to the point that future efforts are doomed simply by association. That would be bad.) The article seems to be making the point that this is an indicator of something wrong at Amazon but I am extremely skeptical of that. I think they just try stuff and see what works.

programminggeek 12y ago

My feeling on the Fire phone was just that they build the wrong phone for their audience. They built the Moto X when they should have built the Moto G. There is a market for a really solid Android phone for say $150 off contract. Amazon could have partnered with any number of prepaid providers and also normal providers to have "the best deal in wireless". They built a whole market around driving down prices and reaching a mass audience, then they compete with top end phones. If the Kindle Fire was $500, it would have flopped. The $600 Fire Phone DID flop. It feels like Kindle tech's value proposition is quality technology at an unbeatable price. The Fire Phone didn't hit that at all.

nailer 12y ago
The Moto X is a genuinely good phone though, the Fire phone is awful. But yes, everyone expected and wanted a Moto G type phone.

TheMagicHorsey 12y ago

I'm surprised at how clueless the Fire phone is described to be, given that the Amazon products I am familiar with (Kindle, various AWS services, Prime, Instant Video) are actually rather good.

jayess 12y ago

So one product didn't pan out during its first iteration. Not exactly the end of the world. This also makes me wonder if they are rolling out the Echo the way they are because of Fire Phone. Invitation only and a (presumably) demand-driven supply chain.

throwawaymsft 12y ago
It's not that they can't make an occasional mistake, it's that they can misjudge things so poorly. What were they expecting people to do with this device? ("Oh man, I'll give up my iPhone and its ecosystem so I can get 3d home screen.") Kindle, echo, etc. were decent in their first iteration and provided some value.

bambax 12y ago

> When Bezos insisted that the original 2007 Kindle include a cellular connection so customers could download and access e-books from anywhere, people thought the idea was an exorbitant flourish (...) When Bezos encouraged a free-shipping initiative, executives pushed back, nervous about its impact on earnings. (...) So when it came to the Fire Phone, says one former product lead, "Yes, there was heated debate about whether it was heading in the right direction. But at a certain point, you just think, ‘Well, this guy has been right so many times before.’" It must be extremely hard/impossible to challenge Jeff Bezos when you're... well when you're not him. However, the examples given here of Jeff being right, are about features that benefit customers (at a cost that some people thought was too high). But the problem with the 3-D functionality wasn't that it was costing the company too much. It was that nobody could figure out how it would be useful -- at any cost for Amazon, or the customer. I remember the videos promoting the Fire phone with random people saying "wow"... they reminded me of the Windows Vista videos, with random people looking out their window and staring at deer in the morning sun. If you have to pay actors to say "wow" in a video maybe there's a problem.

potatolicious 12y ago
Right on - the biggest (and IMO only truly relevant) reason why the Fire Phone flopped is because it doesn't benefit customers. The Fire Phone wasn't built to be a superior phone, or give customers something truly new and useful. It was built to be an Amazon Content Delivery Device. This is a phone whose primary raison d'etre is to get people to buy more stuff from Amazon. It's a distillation of a platform strategy, not the desire to produce a genuine product. Until Amazon starts coming at this with the primary goal of producing a greater, better phone - and the goal of selling more Amazon content a distant second - they will keep failing.
- tiglionabbit 12y ago
  I'm not sure what having so many cameras has to do with that.
  - rancur 12y ago

guiomie 12y ago

"When Bezos insisted that the original 2007 Kindle include a cellular connection so customers could download and access e-books from anywhere, people thought the idea was an exorbitant flourish that would eat into profits. But his prescience was part of what made the Kindle a smash hit." ... Really? Anyone can back this up? I would have thought the opposite. I didn't buy the 3G Kindle because it was more exepensive, all I cared was the eink display.

mynameishere 12y ago
Yes, it's pretty neat. I have an old kindle refurb and just now (as a test) ordered a free public domain book and it took about 2 seconds to show up. I think the whole point of that feature was to capture the airport book market--people facing a four hour flight have a million books to choose from instead of fifty rubbishy paperbacks.
tdicola 12y ago
Ancecdotal, but I remember when the original Kindle came out I thought exactly that. Who would want to pay more money just so you can buy a book when you're sitting at a park or coffee shop? Just give me a device I can tether to my computer and load in books like it's iTunes. The beauty of the cell connection was that it got rid of all the pain of putting stuff on the device. My parents had no idea how to get music on an iPod, but they could easily click a buy button on Amazon.com and see their book on the Kindle within moments like it was magic.
tonyarkles 12y ago
I've got an old 3G kindle (bought second hand). It's a feature I don't really think about until I'm out at the cabin and feel like reading a book I bought a while ago. Tada! Super cool feature, although I'm not sure I would have paid extra for it when I was considering a kindle initially.

fidotron 12y ago

I think the missing piece of discussion here is what's alluded to in the article: Amazon, or at least a critical mass of decision makers at Amazon, want to become aspirational. It really is in the same category of Costco or Walmart, but they constantly wish they could go higher end for higher margins. The Fire Phone is a demonstration of what happens when these two worlds collide. It is a box shifter's definition of a high end phone. I admire Amazon a lot, but this one was a misfire.

taigeair 12y ago

interesting insights on the PMing process

ursidae 12y ago

For an example of the phone Amazon should have built, check out the Yotaphone 2: https://yotaphone.com/gb-en/ https://yotaphone.com/gb-en/ Wonder if Amazon could buy them?

yid 12y ago
Wow, did not know about that! What a shame that Amazon didn't go with the dual e-ink/LCD idea, given that they're practically singlehandedly responsible for e-ink going mainstream. Throw in free-with-Prime, Android, and a few carrier discounts (e.g. free data for a year) and I'd happily dump my iPhone in a heartbeat.
- scott_karana 12y ago
  > Throw in ... Android Huh? The Yotaphone already runs Android, and not an Amazon-crippled version at that. :)
- m_mueller 12y ago
  Shouldn't it be possible to create an e-ink display behind a transparent LCD? Then you wouldn't need to flip anything anymore. I'm guessing that the backlight might be a problem, but maybe that could be integrated with the e-ink as well.
kevinqi 12y ago
what a cool idea. It's hard to know how the user experience is without using it (eg. do you have to flip it back and forth manually often?), but the benefits of having an e-ink panel seems huge.

blisterpeanuts 12y ago

In my opinion, Amazon should have gone with a generic budget phone to augment their "Amazon Basics" line of dependable, economical cables, USB hubs, and so forth. I would make it a plain, vanilla Nexus-like phone running vanilla Android with no skins and not tied to any contracts or carriers, but priced $50 less than a comparable Nexus 5 or whatever is the current Nexus. Or else, make it about $400 but throw in a year of Prime to sweeten the deal. Maybe add a couple of features to distinguish it, such as a microSD memory expansion port. Forget the lame Amazon AppStore, or at least provide both -- AppStore and Google Play, and let the customer choose. Such a device might not sell 20 million units in the first week, but it would sell a heck of a lot better than the Fire Phone did. Heck, I would have bought one. I went with a Nexus 5 just a couple of months ago, after the very pricey Nexus 6 was announced. There's a good market for a vanilla, plain Android phone, and Prime would make it a no-brainer. The article makes Bezos sound a bit over-controlling and zany, but at least the author hastens to add that second guessing Bezos and Amazon is a risky business. Who knows? Perhaps the Fire 2 will get it right. (I hope Jeff's reading this!)

nilkn 12y ago
> I would make it a plain, vanilla Nexus-like phone running vanilla Android with no skins and not tied to any contracts or carriers, but priced $50 less than a comparable Nexus 5 or whatever is the current Nexus. Or else, make it about $400 but throw in a year of Prime to sweeten the deal. Maybe add a couple of features to distinguish it, such as a microSD memory expansion port. Forget the lame Amazon AppStore, or at least provide both -- AppStore and Google Play, and let the customer choose. If they'd actually done this, it'd probably be a pretty good competitor to the Nexus 6, which is not a bad phone at all but departed quite a bit from the precedent of the Nexus 5, other than running stock Android. (Huge, very expensive.) The Android market is ripe for a true successor of the Nexus 5, and Amazon would have made a lot of sense to fill that niche. The best thing we've got right now is the 2014 Moto X, which admittedly is a very good phone.
- soylentcola 12y ago
  Yep. The power button on my Nexus 5 just went up and I had the choice of throwing money at a 14-month-old phone (which is a bit sooner than I had hoped to replace it but old enough that I had to think twice about paying for maintenance) or buying a new phone. Nexus 6 at $650 and in a larger form factor than I would like got me to buy a Moto X instead. $200 cheaper and in a more reasonable size made it the closest thing to a Nexus 5 replacement I ran across. I would have gladly considered something from Amazon if it had been along the lines of an updated Nexus 5 (under $400, stock or virtually stock like the Moto X) even if, like the Nexus line, it sacrificed a bit of that premium "Cadillac" polish like the wooden back and metal edged frame. Only reason I even bothered with that is because there wasn't a cheaper Nexus that wasn't the year+ old N5. Hell...don't even bundle gapps if you want to include the Amazon store...just as long as someone can build AOSP for it and I can install it myself. When the Nexus 7 came out it was roughly equivalent to the Kindle Fire in terms of price and specs but other than fellow Android fans and tech site readers, I didn't know anyone else who bought a Nexus 7. Everyone I knew who wanted an affordable (read: cheaper than an iPad) but functional small tablet bought Kindle Fires so clearly their brand awareness and marketing is worth something if people were willing to buy an slightly inferior device for $50 more.

aetherson 12y ago

This article really reminded me how much Apple screwed up to let Android get a foothold. Look how unassailable the Apple and Android are now -- you can't get a foothold at the bottom of the market because it's hugely fragmented and there are no profit margins, while at the top of the market you're taking on beloved brands and have to try crazy over-the-top bets to get in the door -- which usually backfire. Android could have been the Fire Phone of its day. The earliest Android phones were just amazingly bad compared to the iPhone. But iPhones were only available on AT&T. Do you live in an area where AT&T had no service? Your only choice was an Android. iPhones insisted for years on having exactly one clearly unpopular screen size. Want a 4" screen? Your only choice was an Android. Apple refused to develop a downmarket phone. Want something less than a flagship? Your only choice was an Android. That window has closed. iOS has finally filled in all the places it used to suck (well, maybe except for developing an economical model, but last year's phone looks better now than it used to, and in any case Android filled that niche to the overflowing).

Spooky23 12y ago
Well, good for us. Without Android, the iPhone would suck. We finally have the competition everyone wished for in the Windows 98 days.
fpgeek 12y ago
Apple didn't screw up. The disadvantages you cite are inevitable consequences of the strategy they consciously chose (selling premium devices differentiated by user experience). If Apple hadn't waited until carriers (especially Verizon) to come to them, iPhones would be as full of branding and bloatware as any other carrier-sold phone, not to mention interference with updates, interference with retail launches and who knows what else. Limiting the range of phones they offer means they miss niches, but also helps control costs (allowing them to use premium components more affordably), simplifies the buying process for customers, supports a broader and deeper accessory ecosystem and so on. Not jumping on many new technologies (e.g. LTE), creates an opening for competitors, but also lets Apple avoid the associated growing pains so they can provide a more consistent user experience. If Apple had followed the path you advocate, they'd have picked up many of the disadvantages of the Android ecosystem, without the corresponding advantages (most notably rapid improvements via intra-ecosystem competition). That seems obviously worse than the path they actually chose.

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kbrwn 12y ago

E-ink is what made Amazon a device company. Copying the Yota phone seems like it would have been a better bet then going with the 3D gimmick. Yota has a really interesting product but hasn't really gained support due to a few issues (there isn't really Android SDK support for e-ink screens) that Amazon could have easily solved.

PaulHoule 12y ago

Hey everybody wants to sell a $700 flagship phone since the profit is so high the trouble is does anybody want it?

varunjuice 12y ago

Amazon should've focussed on an inexpensive handset with Amazon services for shopping built in to it, and launched it in emerging markets. This would give it a shot to get to the next billion. Heck, it could've even provided free data if a user does a certain amount of shopping on Amazon a month.

bsclifton 12y ago

>"We’re trying to break the mold of how TV has been made for the last 75 years," Amazon Studios content chief Joe Lewis explained, before dropping a familiar Bezos trope: "It’s still Day One." At least cable TV has a way to deliver most of the content consumers want, even if it sucks and is overpriced. Further fragmenting the market with Yet Another Marketplace in the quest to regain that 30% only hurts the consumer IMO. I personally want nothing to do with locking myself into an ecosystem. Apple, Google and Amazon will never see my cash for eco-system specific purchases.

saosebastiao 12y ago

This has classic Amazon politics written all over it. I'm pretty far removed from anything Kindle/Fire related, but this was my best guess at what happened based off of the Amazon I know: Jeff said make a phone (probably like 5 years ago). They pulled orgs apart and mashed them into this superorg with several VPs and dozens of Directors, with the software teams in Seattle but the hardware folks in a completely different city, and then told them to work it out. In the course of working it out, the hundreds of cooks elbowing each other in the overcrowded kitchen resulted in delay after delay, with the final feature set being a mashup of 40 different director's flagship bullshit-o-tron that they expect to be promoted for (OMG...everybody is gonna think useless 3D stuff that kills the battery is so coool...I can't wait to be reporting directly to Jeff!!!). Come crunch time, the product managers all schedule their SDEs to show up to a 2 hour meeting so they can discuss the same exact plan to ship on time that they discussed yesterday for 2 hours. Now that it is a dud, nobody wants to touch it, so all the Directors/VPs migrate laterally to different orgs (or quit) and then rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, the bug list grows bigger by the day, a handful of software engineers go crazypants optimization on a non-bottleneck feature, and all the sane people just hope for a day where we can forget about it all and focus on some other new whizburger.

puredemo 12y ago
That sounds pretty different from the scenario the article outlined, with Bezos working directly as the product manager..
- m_mueller 12y ago
  Let's not get facts in the way of a good story though..
InclinedPlane 12y ago
I really like Amazon externally, they do some things very well. But I don't know how they keep running.
technofiend 12y ago
Sounds about right. There's only room for one iconoclast at Amazon: anyone showing resistance to the crazy ideas Jeff came up with would be shown the door. You just don't understand, man: Jeff has a ...vision... and he's never been wrong!. It may be time for a strong board of directors who can reign in the ego a little before we get any more projects reminiscent of Lucas' later films.

CamperBob2 12y ago

But will all of Bezos’s risk-taking ultimately pay off? "They make no money!" former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer exclaimed in a recent TV interview. "In my world, [that’s] not a real business. I get it if you don’t make money for two or three years, but Amazon is, what, 21 years old?" I don't know many people who have made money betting against Jeff Bezos, or lost it betting against Steve Ballmer. (iPhone, anyone?)

blueskin_ 12y ago

As son as I saw the fire phone, I knew it'd fail. It's an Android phone without any of Android's advantages, weak hardware, and the only purposes it seemed to serve is to facilitate users buying more stuff from amazon (imagine that!).

minusSeven 12y ago

I haven't seen the fire phone yet but isn't it too early to say its a disaster. They have only just entered the market and are obviously going to get better.

osehgol 12y ago

despite the criticism it has some seriously cool features like firefly and 'MayDay'. Not everything has to gel in with the consumer right away. He's casting the net far and wide, and keeping his foot in the devices game. That's awesome.

noisy_boy 12y ago

When it comes to phones, Amazon was in a great situation. It didn't have any baggage in terms of older models. No risk of cannibalizing existing models if the new phone is superior. It completely knew the strenghts and weaknesses of its competitors. All it had to do is plug the weaknesses and provide something which is superior. Something whose uniqueness lies not in useless 3-D gimmicks but solid features which other leaders are overlooking. For example: 1. Provide a truely great display. This is not necessarily to trump others but something which is just a must. The display is the face of the phone. 2. Provide two SD card slots. Which market leading phone has them? None. With 2x128 GB sdcards (which also happen to be sold by Amazon) and say, 64 GB internal storage, the user gets 320GB of storage. On a phone. Unique? Yes. Useful? Hell yes. 3. Provide two SIM card slots. Granted, there are a whole bunch of phones that provide them but usually not in a phone with 320GB storage. 4. Massive 4000mAh battery. Make the phone slightly bigger, say 5.5 inches to manage heat. As numerous very successful large phones have proven, a big display is not a bad thing for a lot of people. Without getting into the drawbacks of not latching into the Play Store ecosystem, the hardware i.e. the product itself would have generated so much positive buzz. Unfortunately, focusing on solid and useful features is often overlooked and in case of Amazon, it squandered a great opportunity.

untog 12y ago
Provide two SD card slots. Which market leading phone has them? None. Because people don't want them. Very few people would use or want 320GB of storage on their phone. Provide two SIM card slots. Also a feature only wanted by a tiny minority of users. If Amazon made the phone you describe it would be a huge hit with a tiny minority of users. They'd be passionate about it, but the vast majority if people wouldn't care.

umbs 12y ago

"In October, Amazon shocked shareholders when it reported a $437 million net loss for the quarter, its biggest in 14 years." Please pardon my ignorance on Accounting. I don't have basic Accounting 101 knowledge, but please help me understand this. If I, as an individual, loose certain amount of money, it is most likely from my savings. Otherwise, it must be on my credit card, which means, I lost the bank's money. Eventually, I need to repay. How can a company that hasn't made much profit over the years, loose $437 million? If it hasn't made profit, it has no savings. Clearly 'someone' is giving Amazon credit. I assume its the investors. But in what form does Amazon borrow money? Does Amazon issue bonds and raise money? Does it issue more shares/stock? In short, how is Amazon getting so much money and loosing it in each quarter. Any links to read will also be helpful.

stickfigure 12y ago
When people say Amazon is not profitable, they mean "not very profitable". With their enormous revenue, they still generate enough money to maintain a pile of billions of dollars: http://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/cash_on_hand http://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/cash_on_hand (found by googling for "amazon cash on hand")