Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 191 views

    Amazon's Fire Phone Failure: Assignment: IT Business Failure January 25, 2016

    Uploaded by

    Abdul Rehman
    - Amazon released the Fire Phone in June 2014 but discontinued it just over a year later in August 2015 after taking a $170 million loss. - There were four main reasons for its failure: it was too expensive at $199, its app store had far fewer apps than competitors, it was released too late in the smartphone market, and its features had limited appeal beyond heavy Amazon users. - Amazon is best known for low prices and online shopping, but struggled to compete in the smartphone market and capture attention beyond their existing customer base with the Fire Phone's innovations.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Amazon's Fire Phone Failure: Assignment: IT Business Failure January 25, 2016

    Uploaded by

    Abdul Rehman
    191 views4 pages
    - Amazon released the Fire Phone in June 2014 but discontinued it just over a year later in August 2015 after taking a $170 million loss. - There were four main reasons for its failure: it was too expensive at $199, its app store had far fewer apps than competitors, it was released too late in the smartphone market, and its features had limited appeal beyond heavy Amazon users. - Amazon is best known for low prices and online shopping, but struggled to compete in the smartphone market and capture attention beyond their existing customer base with the Fire Phone's innovations.

    Original Title

    docx-2-3

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    - Amazon released the Fire Phone in June 2014 but discontinued it just over a year later in August 2015 after taking a $170 million loss. - There were four main reasons for its failure: it was too expensive at $199, its app store had far fewer apps than competitors, it was released too late in the smartphone market, and its features had limited appeal beyond heavy Amazon users. - Amazon is best known for low prices and online shopping, but struggled to compete in the smartphone market and capture attention beyond their existing customer base with the Fire Phone's innovations.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    191 views4 pages

    Amazon's Fire Phone Failure: Assignment: IT Business Failure January 25, 2016

    Uploaded by

    Abdul Rehman
    - Amazon released the Fire Phone in June 2014 but discontinued it just over a year later in August 2015 after taking a $170 million loss. - There were four main reasons for its failure: it was too expensive at $199, its app store had far fewer apps than competitors, it was released too late in the smartphone market, and its features had limited appeal beyond heavy Amazon users. - Amazon is best known for low prices and online shopping, but struggled to compete in the smartphone market and capture attention beyond their existing customer base with the Fire Phone's innovations.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    Amazon’s Fire Phone Failure

    Assignment: IT Business
    Failure January 25, 2016

    https://www.coursehero.com/file/16221252/Amazon-Fire-Phone/
    Today the world revolves around information and telecommunication. Each day new

    technology and inventions are being made in the area of information, processing and travelling.

    Almost every area has been affected by this. IT projects ranging from the smallest to the biggest

    are embarked upon daily, but a very high percentage of these projects are destined for failure

    right from the beginning. These projects may cost only a couple hundred dollars while others

    cost millions making failure seem catastrophic. An example of such a failure is the Amazon Fire

    Phone that was released on June 18, 2014. The promising project took just six weeks to turn

    into a massive failure.

    In 2014, Amazon took a $170 million dollar loss after releasing the Fire Phone due to

    its unsold inventory. It was first introduced in Seattle in the Fremont Theatre, at a press event

    held by Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos. The phone was originally priced at $199 when bought with

    a contract and was intended as an iPhone competitor. As a limited time promotion, a year of

    Amazon Prime and 1,000 Amazon coins were offered to buyers with the purchase of a Fire

    Phone. Only six weeks after introducing the phone to the market, its price went down to $0.99

    from $199 with a two-year contract and from $650 to $449 off contract. Soon after, the price

    continued to decline and on August 2015, Amazon discontinued the Fire Phone.

    There are said to be four main reasons why Amazon’s Fire Phone was doomed from the

    beginning. Those four reasons are: it was too expensive, had a small store app, late to market,

    and had features of limited interest. Amazon is known for offering lower prices than its

    competitors on just about everything they sell. So it came as somewhat of a surprise when the

    phone launched at $199 with a two-year contract, essentially the same price as the Samsung

    Galaxy and the iPhone. The high price did not help motivate iPhone and Galaxy users to

    abandon their devices, which is what Amazon needed to happen for the Fire Phone to gain

    attention.
    Although Amazon’s devices run on Android, they use a proprietary app store tailor-

    made for the company’s phones and tablets. As a result, developers had to create different

    versions of the same apps specifically for the Fire Phone and Kindle Fire, and many never

    bothered to.

    While Google Play store has about one 1 million apps, Amazon’s app store only has 240,000

    apps. Fire Phone owners were also quite upset to know that they had no easy access to Gmail,

    YouTube or Google Maps.

    The Fire Phone was a classic case of “too little, too late.” Apple is already on its eighth

    generation of iPhones, and Android devices have also been around for a long time. Smartphones

    account for 72 percent of the overall mobile market in the United States. Amazon would have

    had the highest luck convincing first-time smartphone buyers, who had yet to develop a device

    preference, into buying the Fire Phone. However, there weren’t many of the first-time

    smartphone buyers left to convince.

    Many of the phone’s innovative features, like the ability to scan 100 million real-world

    objects with the press of a button, were really meant to get customers to purchase more things on

    Amazon. Those features attracted only the heavy Amazon users and no other new customers.

    New features on the Fire Phone, like the 3D display, did not captivate the consumer’s attention

    enough to make them change devices. “Amazon is a lot of things—convenient, industry-

    crushing, hyper-efficient—but “cool” is not one of them.” said Marcus Wohlsen. Since Amazon

    is dominantly good at what it already does, which is selling stuff online, many believe they

    should stay out of the designing of new mobile devices. Trying to compete in a different market

    apparently leads to stacks of unsold phones gathering dust in warehouses.

    Reference Page
    Author: Marcus Wohlsen. http://www.wired.com/2015/01/amazon-fire-phone-always-going-fail/

    You might also like