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Under the Apple Hype Machine, Amazon Drops Fire Phone Price To 99 Cents

Whatever it is that Apple's going to announce a few hours from now, it seems Amazon has decided it's probably not going to send people rushing to buy its Fire phone. Amazon's cut the price of the phone from $199 to 99 cents. At that price, the Fire phone comes with free Amazon Prime membership, too -- but also a 2-year contract with (exclusive carrier) AT&T. Writes ExtremeTech: Whether that’s going to be enough to stimulate sales is an open question — $450 unlocked is still a tough sell for a device that is overmatched by products like the cheaper Nexus 5, or the recently unveiled $500 second-gen Moto X. In August, adoption data from advertising agency Chitika claimed that total Amazon Fire Phone sales were paltry, representing just 0.015-0.02% of phones in use, or fewer than 30,000 phones. That number will have doubtlessly ticked up slightly since then, and it’s true that Amazon’s partners, like AT&T, have aggressively pushed the phone in online stores.

2 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's not apple this time! by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 4, Informative

    It doesn't have that going for it anymore.

    The UI's interesting as an experiment, but ultimately really creepy.

    I'm pretty sure Aldous Huxley has a few things to say about an electronic gizmo that serves as an entry way to cheap consumer goods.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  2. It's not 99 cents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's not 99 cents. It's cost is covered in monthly payments.