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The Fire phone debacle

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Re: The Fire phone debacle

#71

Post by discodave »

andrewmutz wrote: post #23

It is extremely difficult for large organizations to create the sort of innovative leaps that startups can create. Amazon is attempting to do this. They have been successful in many different ways, but for every winner they create they need to create multiple losers. The fire phone seems to be one of these losers, but time will tell. I really admire Amazon's tolerance for failure. Most large companies would never tak…

Another way of thinking about it is that it is extremely difficult for startups to create successful innovative leaps since most of them fail.

Amazon is more like a VC fund or an incubator than one individual startup. What's the 2014 revenue of all YC companies combined? That would be a good number to compare Amazons revenue to.

Re: The Fire phone debacle

#72

Post by dsr_ »

andybak wrote: post #53
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #3

>"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?

It used to be that you paid for the phone, then you paid for service. You can still do that, if you're prepared to pay $400-$1000 for a phone. (Except Google's Nexus 4 was reasonably priced.)

But the usual method for the last decade was that you paid for a 24 month contract, and pay a lump up front that paid for the differentiation of the low-end phones (free, or 99c, or $50) from the high end phones ($100 - $300). The rest of the price was invisibly wrapped into the contract -- and there would likely be a hefty early termination fee if you wanted to walk away from the contract.

Recently, phone companies have been trying to extract even more money by offering a non-contract service contract (cancel any time, no fee) along with a rent-to-own plan on the phone (pay a chunk up front, then after 24 payments it's yours.) For some reason this does not result in a discount for the service plan...

Re: The Fire phone debacle

#74

Post by yid »

ursidae wrote: post #73

For an example of the phone Amazon should have built, check out the Yotaphone 2: https://yotaphone.com/gb-en/ Wonder if Amazon could buy them?

Wow, did not know about that! What a shame that Amazon didn't go with the dual e-ink/LCD idea, given that they're practically singlehandedly responsible for e-ink going mainstream.

Throw in free-with-Prime, Android, and a few carrier discounts (e.g. free data for a year) and I'd happily dump my iPhone in a heartbeat.

Re: The Fire phone debacle

#75

Post by SwellJoe »

morsch wrote: post #60
SwellJoe wrote: post #16

I 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.

I haven't looked into that yet, and am hesitant to go that route, as it often means giving up some features...sometimes important ones. My old Sensation 4G never got a new ROM because WiFi and the camera were non-working with Cyanogenmod; I rooted it and stipped it of all of its T-Mobile and HTC shovelware, but it kept its default OS.

I didn't need to root it to get the Google Play Store side loaded, so I haven't looked into that, either. That said, if I can't figure out how to replace the awful launcher/home screen on this thing, I may eventually give it over the to CM gods (or whatever custom ROM comes along). I would like my back button, as well.

Edit: this conversation led to me googling how to replace the annoying launcher...it was as easy as installing Google Now Launcher. I just reduced my dislike of my phone by another large measure. Now, if I can just get the back button to come back, the stupid tilt functions disabled, and google maps to work right, this might turn out to be a decent phone.

Re: The Fire phone debacle

#76

Post by nailer »

programminggeek wrote: post #47

My feeling on the Fire phone was just that they build the wrong phone for their audience. They built the Moto X when they should have built the Moto G. There is a market for a really solid Android phone for say $150 off contract. Amazon could have partnered with any number of prepaid providers and also normal providers to have "the best deal in wireless". They built a whole market around driving down prices and reach…

The Moto X is a genuinely good phone though, the Fire phone is awful.

But yes, everyone expected and wanted a Moto G type phone.

Re: The Fire phone debacle

#77

Post by mdwrigh2 »

nailer wrote: post #40
devindotcom wrote: post #15

When 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?"…

It's really weird. The FireTV voice recognition is innovative and in practice works incredibly well. Also the box is delivered already configured to your account. Both those ideas are so good they're retrospectively obvious, and you wonder why Apple and Google never did them. I'd buy it again at twice the price. But the Fire phone? Ugly, overpriced, and nothing that's new is useful. I wouldn't buy it at half the pric…

> Also the box is delivered already configured to your account.

Google does do this if you buy from the Play Store, FWIW.

Re: The Fire phone debacle

#78

Post by blisterpeanuts »

In my opinion, Amazon should have gone with a generic budget phone to augment their "Amazon Basics" line of dependable, economical cables, USB hubs, and so forth.

I would make it a plain, vanilla Nexus-like phone running vanilla Android with no skins and not tied to any contracts or carriers, but priced $50 less than a comparable Nexus 5 or whatever is the current Nexus. Or else, make it about $400 but throw in a year of Prime to sweeten the deal. Maybe add a couple of features to distinguish it, such as a microSD memory expansion port. Forget the lame Amazon AppStore, or at least provide both -- AppStore and Google Play, and let the customer choose.

Such a device might not sell 20 million units in the first week, but it would sell a heck of a lot better than the Fire Phone did. Heck, I would have bought one. I went with a Nexus 5 just a couple of months ago, after the very pricey Nexus 6 was announced. There's a good market for a vanilla, plain Android phone, and Prime would make it a no-brainer.

The article makes Bezos sound a bit over-controlling and zany, but at least the author hastens to add that second guessing Bezos and Amazon is a risky business. Who knows? Perhaps the Fire 2 will get it right. (I hope Jeff's reading this!)

Re: The Fire phone debacle

#79

Post by nilkn »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #78

In my opinion, Amazon should have gone with a generic budget phone to augment their "Amazon Basics" line of dependable, economical cables, USB hubs, and so forth. I would make it a plain, vanilla Nexus-like phone running vanilla Android with no skins and not tied to any contracts or carriers, but priced $50 less than a comparable Nexus 5 or whatever is the current Nexus. Or else, make it about $400 but throw in a yea…

> I would make it a plain, vanilla Nexus-like phone running vanilla Android with no skins and not tied to any contracts or carriers, but priced $50 less than a comparable Nexus 5 or whatever is the current Nexus. Or else, make it about $400 but throw in a year of Prime to sweeten the deal. Maybe add a couple of features to distinguish it, such as a microSD memory expansion port. Forget the lame Amazon AppStore, or at least provide both -- AppStore and Google Play, and let the customer choose.

If they'd actually done this, it'd probably be a pretty good competitor to the Nexus 6, which is not a bad phone at all but departed quite a bit from the precedent of the Nexus 5, other than running stock Android. (Huge, very expensive.)

The Android market is ripe for a true successor of the Nexus 5, and Amazon would have made a lot of sense to fill that niche. The best thing we've got right now is the 2014 Moto X, which admittedly is a very good phone.

Re: The Fire phone debacle

#80

Post by [deleted] »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #78

In my opinion, Amazon should have gone with a generic budget phone to augment their "Amazon Basics" line of dependable, economical cables, USB hubs, and so forth. I would make it a plain, vanilla Nexus-like phone running vanilla Android with no skins and not tied to any contracts or carriers, but priced $50 less than a comparable Nexus 5 or whatever is the current Nexus. Or else, make it about $400 but throw in a yea…

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