Chie SuarezUpon Apple’s release of iPhone 6, Amazon has announced a drastic price drop from $200 to only 99 cents and a two-year contract with AT&T for their smartphone — Amazon Fire Phone.
Image credit: Amazon.com
Unveiled in late July, the Fire was expected to reach a revenue of one to two million in its first year.
Amazon.com has pointed out, during the unveiling of Fire Phone months ago, its interesting key features, which includes Dynamic Perspective, Firefly Technology and Mayday, and a free one-year membership for Amazon Prime, Amazon’s shipping and video club which regularly costs $99.
However, Wayne Lam, Senior Analyst for Mobile Devices & Networks at IHS Technology, has noted that this strategy has been executed before with the so-called Facebook phone. A month after the launch last year, the Facebook phone has drove its price down to 99 cents. According to The New York Times, the Facebook phone never gained a foothold in the market.
“If history is any indication, this doesn’t usually work,” said Lam.
The reviewers also has given the Fire Phone unsatisfactory ratings in the “reviews” section of Amazon.com. The New York Times said that “more than half the reviews are three stars or fewer.”
With competitors like Apple’s iPhone 6 and Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 phones, the Amazon Fire phone is having a difficult time getting the attention.
“This was always the phone for die-hard Amazon fans — people who’d value an Amazon-centric smartphone above all else — and the problem is that there just don’t seem to be that many of those,” Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research exclaimed.