When Amazon launched its much anticipated Fire Phone, on-lookers were rather excited by its glitzy features, though no one could really pin down how it would meet any practical uses. The Fire Phone came with plenty of ‘first-seens ‘such as 3D imagery, Dynamic Perspective that gives you information by tilting the phone, unlimited cloud storage and Mayday Help that provides Amazon’s live technical support around the clock. With a 4.7-inch 720p display, a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor and a 13Mp camera, the hardware is pretty impressive too.
Despite getting the right hardware and a set of nifty features on its side, Amazon has struggled to sell a decent number of Fire Phone units. It’s been a month since the launch and, according to research by comScore and Chitika and some number-crunching by The Guardian, it has sold no more than 35,000 phones so far. Here are a few reasons that sheds light on why the Fire Phone hasn’t gone down too well with consumers.
‘Shopping’ is not why users buy phones: There’s no doubt that Amazon is huge and one of the world’s most preferred online retailer. But that’s not a compelling enough reason to buy into their ecosystem. The camera, features and even the operating system is built around Amazon’s services that aims at getting you to buy more from its store. FireFly – one of Fire phone’s camera apps – lets users snap any item and buy it on Amazon. In order to make sure nobody misses it, the phone has a dedicated button just for this gimmicky feature. And you don’t even need a dedicated smartphone to shop. You can shop from pretty much any device and from any store you want to.
Fire OS pales in comparison with Android and iOS: The Fire phone runs a forked version of the Android operating system called Fire OS, though it doesn’t resemble Android at all. In fact, buying the phone ties you to the Amazon Appstore. This means you can’t get Google apps such as Gmail and Drive to work on it, which are essential to people nowadays. Also, some of Amazon’s alternative apps, such as the Fire’s Siri-like voice search to get weather or directions and Amazon Maps, don’t work very well.
Too expensive and exclusive: The Fire phone was launched exclusive to AT&T with a two-year contract for $199.99 for the 32GB version. The 64GB version was priced at $299.99 for a two year contract. While it seems reasonable for a high-spec phone, the price made users wary of trying out a phone with an OS they are not accustomed to. It also put the phone in direct competition with the iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S5, while the exclusive AT&T contract meant that the phone was available only in the US.
The Fire phone is reminiscent of the HTC First or ‘Facebook phone’ that put up a flop show last year. Similar to the Amazon Fire Phone, the HTC-backed Facebook phone was built around Facebook and was exclusive to AT&T and also carried an ambitious price tag. However, the Fire Phone fared better at least in terms of its hardware. While the HTC First was cancelled very soon, we don’t really know the fate of Amazon’s Fire Phone yet.
The ambitious Fire Phone has done little to bring Amazon the fortunes it expected, with the company facing losses and falling short of Wall Street’s earnings expectations. Last month,Amazon reported its largest quarterly loss since 2012 as operating expenses rose 24 percent, led by a 40 percent surge in spending on technology and content. A failed device would be a further blow to its bottom-line, not to mention its plans of earning revenue through smartphones.
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