Slashdot Mirror
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.
Someone had to say it.
They failed on their own merits.
I doubt the Bigass iPhone thing today's the reason why they tipped on this.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
There's only so much you can get for a spoon that only works in the Amazon bowl.
There may be no "I" in team, but there's also no "F" in way.
Amazon Drops Fire Phone Price To $450
FTFY. The price is $450. If you buy it for $0.99, you are actually paying $600.99 because it includes an overpriced phone service contract.
Amazon is a victim of their own hubris, not Apple.
Only an idiot or egomaniac would think that Amazon could compete with that product...that phone...it had too many dumb bells and whistles (3D screen! ooh shiny!) but all the important details were wrong.
Amazon lost out to a better designed, better marketed, more established, funner to use product...just like M$ did with Zune
Thank you Dave Raggett
For a buck, I'd buy it. Hell, I'd buy it for $20 or $30, even though it's within the confines of Amazon. It's not like the entire phone is going to be locked down to just Amazon. You'd surely still have a browser and apps to do various things outside of Amazon. And probably wifi service if you wanted to connect it to your home network or something.
It's the phone contract that does it in for me. In an age where I can use Ting as my phone service for an average of $12/mo with no contract, why in the hell would I want to get a two year expensive contract with one of the old phone companies?!
Of course, as a cynical, tin-foil hat wearing individual I'll say that anything you do can and will be monitored and tracked by Amazon for their own purposes, even when not directly using their products.
So, really, are you actually any better off?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"but also a 2-year contract with (exclusive carrier) AT&T." Wow, what a deal! I think I'd actually rather rip out all my teeth one at a time though.
The Kindle Fire was a well-marketed, cheap tablet launched at a time most people were just starting to hear how fun and useful tablets could be. Many people wanted a tablet, but were unwilling to drop $500 on an iPad - those folks bought a Kindle Fire. (Yeah there were other cheap tablets, but frankly the average Joe didn't ever hear about them)
The Fire Phone comes at a time when iOS and Android phones are already entrenched. The majority of people who want a smartphone already own one. Worse, there's not an obvious price gap between the Fire and it's erstwhile competition. Free Prime shipping isn't going to sell the phone, since the types of people who know about Prime are the type of people that already bought into a phone platform years ago.
#DeleteChrome
It's not 99 cents. It's cost is covered in monthly payments.
Under the Apple Hype Machine
Perhaps I'm being super-dense, but... what's that supposed to even mean?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what Amazon was thinking when they released the thing. While on a "raw spec" basis, it's not a bad phone, it's headline feature does little more (at the moment) than make it easier to buy stuff from Amazon. Why would anybody buy this phone over a similarly-priced phone from Samsung/Moto/LG?
If the phone was significantly cheaper than the competition (like the Kindle Fire), or if the tight Amazon integration was a super-useful feature (like the Kindle Readers), it might have been a success. But charging the same as the competition for a phone running a custom OS? I expected it to be about as successful as the "Facebook Phone", which is to say "not at all".
This sort of completely blind hubris reminds me of the Netflix fiasco. Anybody with more than a few brain cells to rub together should have been able to see the flaws here...
Yes, you can still install and run Android apps like any other Android phone, as long as those apps are actually available from the Amazon app store. Not all apps have been customized or tested to run on Amazon's particular Android build, which is a little more custom than the "skin" other Android builders commonly use.
No, it's not as bad as a Zune, but it doesn't offer any compelling case over the more-standard alternatives.
I disagree with you on the walled garden argument - I can read Amazon Kindle books on the Kindle ecosystem series of devices
You've got it backwards. The question is why we would need a crippled Amazon device? I can buy an iPad and buy music and books and merchandise from Amazon. I cannot buy a Kindle and buy music from Apple. So I have less restrictions buying the Apple hardware than the Amazon hardware because Amazon software and content will run on more platforms.
Amazon's Fire tablets and phones are nothing special and are clearly aimed at getting you to buy more stuff from Amazon rather than for being a general use device. I don't really need Amazon's help there so what is the point of these devices? Even their e-paper based Kindles are pretty locked down (my wife has one) and it's relatively awkward to do anything other than buy stuff from Amazon with it.
My content purchased from Amazon certainly seems to be available on a much wider range of devices than content purchased from Apple...
Apple is trying to sell you a device. Amazon is trying to sell you content and stuff from their store. I'd rather have the Apple device and be able to buy from Amazon than they Amazon device and be unable to buy from Apple.
The initial price was that of a super-premium phone, which it wasn't. Amazon has never been about making money on hardware, but about eyeballs. This cash grab was unfounded. They lost the chance to make it as easy as "sign up and get your free phone, supported by the Amazon ecosystem". Now it's just an also-ran.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I don't see where this has anything to do with Apple other than an opportunity to pour on a little hate. Amazon's offering did not inspire people to stand in line to buy it. That has nothing to do with what Apple may or may not do.
We know it's you, John.
Signed, Amazon.com
So basically they made it a subsidized phone with the extra $25/month charge to have it on your AT&T plan. Over the 24 month contract that's $600.
Oh, stop punching numbers into that calculator, reading the fine print and just sign the contract you rube.
AT&T (and all of the major carriers) do this kind of thing all the time. Car dealers do this, credit card companies do this, realtors do this all kinds of retailers do this.. They turn things into monthly payments, rip you a new one while you pay an arm and a leg. They bleed you dry one drop at a time and most of us don't notice how we've been played. We just complain that everything costs so much.
You are NOT supposed to catch on to the ruse and actually put numbers in the calculator and hit the multiply key...Wana be really upset with your carrier? Ask them how much it is just to buy the handset outright vrs what they end up collecting if you buy it monthly. Ouch... Now THAT'S a finance charge!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It's the phone contract that does it in for me. In an age where I can use Ting as my phone service for an average of $12/mo with no contract, why in the hell would I want to get a two year expensive contract with one of the old phone companies?!
Agreed...Switched to Ting two years ago and haven't regretted it once. I'm saving $100 mo. over my previous carrier for the same two lines and I haven't had to change my usage.
I was curious of Amazon's decision to make the phone an AT&T exclusive. Hopefully for Amazon's sake the exclusionary period was only six months
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Dang, even if you buy it outright it is LOCKED to the AT&T network. Amazon has got to undo that mess or I'm NOT EVER going to think about it.
Any phone you buy outright should come UNLOCKED by default. Any phone you own after the contract is over should be unlocked upon request, if not automatically by the carrier...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Why should I pay them for what amounts to a Point-of-Sale terminal, then have to sign with and pay AT&T for the means to connect it?
AMZN already has "free" 3G via WhisperNet for Kindle; why can't they just act as a reseller for air/data time?
What I thought should happen when AMZN announced a phone was that you would buy it for a nominal amount, and your AMZN purchases would generate airtime credits:
Buy something, get a percentage of the purchase price converted to minutes/megabytes. Of course, you could always 'buy' more mins/megs, but if you're trying to drive consumption of your other products, it seems straightforward to make the means to do so a reward for the behavior you want.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
...there's a good chance I don't want it.
http://www.apple.com/live/2014...
Anyone else seeing "10:49 a.m., 10 a.m. can’t come soon enough." and 10:47 a.m., Looking forward to a great day in Cupertino! Join us at 10am Pacific. #AppleLive"?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I'd have so bought it if....
a) Expandable Memory Card
[Yes gimmick sold me on it.]
b) Replaceable battery
c) Front facing speakers (ala M8, which I'd have bought if it had a replaceable battery)
For a buck, I'd buy it. Hell, I'd buy it for $20 or $30, even though it's within the confines of Amazon. [..] It's the phone contract that does it in for me.
That's the whole blooming point, though! You're only being offered the phone for 99 cents *because* you have to agree to the contract.
It's like a shop had a "Buy 1, Get the Second for 1 cent" offer on horribly overpriced multivitamins, you wouldn't say "well, they're not even worth half the regular price, but I might have snapped them up for 1 cent if they didn't require you to buy the other at full price"!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The phone isn't being given away for free or even cheap. If you go with the phone cost .99 and a 2 year contract, you pay $60 for the 300 minutes contract monthly.
If you go with no down payment and $18 a month for the phone, you can get that 300 minutes plan for $45. $3 difference.
Still paying for the phone with the 2 year contract, pretty much the same amount as if you subsidized it.
Be seeing you...
Yes, I know that Fire OS is based on Android. But it is different enough that you cannot assume that an Android app will work on Fire OS, and Fire OS devices do not have the Google Play store, so if an app is only available there, you are SOL. This is not a trivial limitation; you are missing out on some apps like, say, GMail.
I breezed through TFA, and it wasn't clear to me whether it's truly a price cut or that they're merely rolling more of the cost of the phone into the monthly payments. Assuming a $450 price tag, $200 with contract tells me they probably get another $250 over the life of the contract. So, at $1, does that mean they still get $250 over the life of the contract, or $449? If the latter, it's not a deal, it's just different bookkeeping.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If the Fire Phone is anything like the advertising-riddden walled garden of a device as the Kindle Fire HD that I bought, I am not sure how much traction it will get, no matter what the price point. I couldn't jailbreak that thing fast enough. I understand trying to push people to your own stores for purchases, but when your stores are lackluster, it just feels like a really really cheap experience. I suppose you get what you pay for.
how the heck should i know?
If you have a Fire Phone, you should be able to tell whether its security settings have a checkbox to allow installation of applications from unknown sources. The first-generation Kindle Fire did.
and why do you have such a hard on for apks? do you like HOSTS?
I'm talking APK as in Android package, not APK as in proponent of hosts files as a first line of defense in layered security.
looks similar in the UK - unfortunately it's only with an O2 contract
if "Faith" could be proved with facts - would it still be faith? So why does "Faith" try to present beliefs as fact? -
I just checked and you're right. Amazon got rid of that $99/yr developer program fee on August 20, 2013.