I was there for a year. On that team. This article is quite inaccurate.
Can you elaborate? Even elliptically...
The Fire phone debacle
51–60 of 188 posts
Re: The Fire phone debacle
#52Re: The Fire phone debacle
#53>"it now sells for 99 cents" (OP) // Where can I get one for 99c, in UK on ebay [new] they're about £200 (~$300) on O2 network or £250 unlocked. Lowest monthly for a contract is £28.
What I don't get about US pricings is that the phone price stays constant whatever the contract.
In the UK a phone might be free on a £45/month contract, £100 on a £30/month contract and so on. Does that not appen in the US?
Re: The Fire phone debacle
#54So one product didn't pan out during its first iteration. Not exactly the end of the world.
This also makes me wonder if they are rolling out the Echo the way they are because of Fire Phone. Invitation only and a (presumably) demand-driven supply chain.
Re: The Fire phone debacle
#55Amazon seems to have truly become the Walmart of e-commerce, and I'm not just talking about what the company does (commerce), but rather what the brand represents. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Walmart and Amazon have proven that if you dominate the supply chain landscape and offer a huge variety with low margins, you can do moderately well (i.e. stay in business). But with so much being essentially commodity g…
I think they could succeed by modeling themselves after a Costco/Kirkland-type relationship
Re: The Fire phone debacle
#56Amazon seems to have truly become the Walmart of e-commerce, and I'm not just talking about what the company does (commerce), but rather what the brand represents. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Walmart and Amazon have proven that if you dominate the supply chain landscape and offer a huge variety with low margins, you can do moderately well (i.e. stay in business). But with so much being essentially commodity g…
The problem for amazon that strong competition is appearing. Walmart is starting to take ecommerce seriously. And growth is declining(maybe they are related ?) .
And i don't think this is exactly overnight. Prime, and amazon's customer service are good examples of amazon trying to build a "love" brand.
To some extent it could be a desperate move by bezos - because what if in the future people will prefer to do their ecommerce via phones ?
Re: The Fire phone debacle
#57> When Bezos insisted that the original 2007 Kindle include a cellular connection so customers could download and access e-books from anywhere, people thought the idea was an exorbitant flourish (...) When Bezos encouraged a free-shipping initiative, executives pushed back, nervous about its impact on earnings. (...) So when it came to the Fire Phone, says one former product lead, "Yes, there was heated debate about whether it was heading in the right direction. But at a certain point, you just think, ‘Well, this guy has been right so many times before.’"
It must be extremely hard/impossible to challenge Jeff Bezos when you're... well when you're not him.
However, the examples given here of Jeff being right, are about features that benefit customers (at a cost that some people thought was too high).
But the problem with the 3-D functionality wasn't that it was costing the company too much. It was that nobody could figure out how it would be useful -- at any cost for Amazon, or the customer.
I remember the videos promoting the Fire phone with random people saying "wow"... they reminded me of the Windows Vista videos, with random people looking out their window and staring at deer in the morning sun.
If you have to pay actors to say "wow" in a video maybe there's a problem.
Re: The Fire phone debacle
#58When I attended the launch, they had a hands-on period where I noticed a few of the issues people have pointed out in reviews. But every phone has issues. More worryingly, I asked about a few things that the unique tech in the Fire Phone could be used for - nothing groundbreaking, just little suggestions: "It'd be great to have the tilt controls do ____ here" or "Do you have plans to allow users to turn this on/off?"…
No power switch (even soft)? Really?
It has a power button ...
Re: The Fire phone debacle
#59"When Bezos insisted that the original 2007 Kindle include a cellular connection so customers could download and access e-books from anywhere, people thought the idea was an exorbitant flourish that would eat into profits. But his prescience was part of what made the Kindle a smash hit." ...
Really? Anyone can back this up? I would have thought the opposite. I didn't buy the 3G Kindle because it was more exepensive, all I cared was the eink display.
Re: The Fire phone debacle
#60I have a Fire Phone. I couldn't resist, when they were $199 and include a year of Prime (which I already pay for), it's $100 for a quite high end piece of hardware. And, the hardware actually is really great. Camera is great, display is great, touchscreen is great. 2GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. It's very high end phone hardware at a very low end phone price. That said, it's an awful phone. The OS feels clunky and…
So I take it there is no custom stock Android ROM available for the Fire phone? I only found a fake Android L ROM. You can root it, though, a fairly recent development apparently.