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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."
I was an an engineer in that team during the first incarnation of the project. The article is very very inaccurate.
- team was not scrapped by jeff, at least not until large number of people walked out due to mismanagement
- prototypes that worked (and were of phone size & shape) existed more than 2 years before launch but then (as mentioned) team walked and it all had to be scrapped
- hw team often undercut sw team by replacing components and not telling anyone about it
- hw team often made mistakes of the very basic variety (two separate sets of pull-ups on a single i2c bus)
- some parts choices were motivated by personal interests of people in the hw team, even against their own data & analyses. This was allowed to proceed
- some of the management made the team look very foolish in front of vendors (asking questions that made no sense in the current millennium)
- sw team was kept busy by endless meetings with no end in sight, which significantly cut into any chance of productivity