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The Fire Phone Debacle and What It Means For Amazon's Future
HughPickens.com points out an article at Fast Company that dug into the creation of Amazon's floundering Fire Phone to figure out why the company pushed so hard to bring it to market. The piece is an indictment of Jeff Bezos's determination to make the Fire Phone into a competitor for an already-saturated high-end smartphone market. "This wasn't some vague guideline from an executive busy running other parts of the business; based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former employees, most of whom were deeply involved with the project, the CEO drove every aspect of the phone’s creation from the outset."
Now that Amazon's growth is slowing and profits have yet to be seen, investors and analysts have run out of patience for gambles like this one. "What makes the Fire Phone a particularly troubling adventure, however, is that Amazon’s CEO seemingly lost track of the essential driver of his company’s brand. It’s understandable that Bezos would want to give Amazon a premium shine, but to focus on a high-end product, instead of the kind of service that has always distinguished the company, proved misguided."
Now that Amazon's growth is slowing and profits have yet to be seen, investors and analysts have run out of patience for gambles like this one. "What makes the Fire Phone a particularly troubling adventure, however, is that Amazon’s CEO seemingly lost track of the essential driver of his company’s brand. It’s understandable that Bezos would want to give Amazon a premium shine, but to focus on a high-end product, instead of the kind of service that has always distinguished the company, proved misguided."
Amazon has tried to create their own product lines with the Kindle and Fire branding, but unlike Sears' branding for Craftsman and Kenmore, the Kindle and Fire devices are less ends, and more means, at least in my eye, and when they hamstring the phone version by basically taking everything useful out of Android that made it popular (ie, Google's through-the-internet connectivity for 'cloud' stuff) they take away most of the means for which I would use the device.
I honestly don't care what brand of smartphone I have any more than I care what brand of business computer I have at work, in that the phones I buy run vanilla or close-to-vanilla Android, and the computers my work supplies for me generally run Windows, or I install Linux on them myself. The Fire Phone isn't really Android in that what I want to use Android for isn't there, and the experience would be just as foreign to me as using an iPhone or a Blackberry or a Windows phone.
Amazon over-valued their own brand. Amazon is a service more than a product, and attempting to be a product hasn't worked as well for them as they expected.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
What a short sighted midget.
How do you think Amazon ended up as on of the world's largest companies, completely dominating all retail ecommerce, and being the sole leader in the booming cloud industry. If Bezos had asked VCs, banks or or anonymous cowards for advice advice he'd probably be the operator of a couple of walgreen's or McDonald's stores now. Or maybe owner of Blockbuster franchise. You can't build something new and successful if you don't take a few risks.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.