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.

Comments

It's a Fire Sale

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone had to say it.

Re:It's a Fire Sale

[Dogtanian]

Joking aside, the "99 cents" headline might give the impression of a big (if not "fire sale") reduction, but it's is as misleading (and pointless) on its own as the subsidised headline "price" of *any* contract-tied phone is.

This post already made the point that the total price of phone + contract (since you can't get the former without the latter) over two years is $600, which implies that it was $800 before when the still-contract-tied phone was selling for "$200" and it was being panned as an awful deal.

If it's not quite a non-story, it's not the one it's being made out to be either.

It's not apple this time!

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

They failed on their own merits.

I doubt the Bigass iPhone thing today's the reason why they tipped on this.

Re:It's not apple this time!

[tepples]

Is there really any compelling feature of the Fire Phone other than being the only not-iPhone that plays Amazon streaming video?

Re:It's not apple this time!

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

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.

Re:It's not apple this time!

[ShaunC]

Well it's easy enough for pretentious 9 year olds to use for playing Minecraft, at least that's all I got out of the commercial. Pretty sure the blame for this phone's flop lies squarely at the feet of Amazon's marketing department or whoever they hired to produce the TV ad. The phone itself barely makes an appearance in the commercial, it's just a couple of kids yammering about how they're going to stream stuff and play games, followed by a double plug for Amazon Prime, which I'm still scratching my head over. I don't need to buy a new phone to get Amazon Prime.

Is Amazon trying to sell an actual product here, or just selling the idea of a digital babysitter? Either way I guess I'm not their target audience and I sorta wonder who is.

Re:It's not apple this time!

[L4m3rthanyou]

I think they hired Microsoft's marketing department to do the commercial.

It's not even believable anyway. My irritating hipster children only use Apple products!

Spoon

[Naatach]

There's only so much you can get for a spoon that only works in the Amazon bowl.

Re:Spoon

[Richard_at_work]

I disagree with you on the walled garden argument - I can read Amazon Kindle books on the Kindle ecosystem series of devices, Apple devices, Android devices, Windows 8 devices, Windows Phone devices, Macs, Windows PCs, Linux PCs, Blackberrys and others.

I can read Apple iBooks on ... Apple devices and Macs.

I can view Amazon Instant Video content on various Kindles, Apple devices, Android devices, Windows 8 devices, all the major consoles, tonnes of TVs natively, and of course Windows PCs and Macs.

I can view Apple iTunes video content on ... Apple devices and Macs.

My content purchased from Amazon certainly seems to be available on a much wider range of devices than content purchased from Apple...

Fire = Zune

[globaljustin]

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

No Google Play Store

[sirwired]

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.