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Amazon Stands By Poor Selling Fire Phone

The ill-fated Amazon Fire Phone is just not shifting, according to a senior VP at the company. As you remember, the Amazon branded device, complete with 4 camera facial recognition technology and unprecedented access to Amazon stores, just didn’t manage to make it off shelves, potentially due to a lack of marketing and customer interest in the device compared to other models.

The chink in the armor of this admittedly advanced piece of hardware was, according to Amazon VP of Devices David Limp, the pricing of the phone. Amazon just didn’t put a low enough price tag on the device.

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“We didn’t get the price right,” Limp admitted. “I think people come to expect a great value, and we sort of mismatched expectations. We thought we had it right. But we’re also willing to say, ‘we missed.’ And so we corrected.”

It’s hard for anyone to admit their failure, so our thoughts go out to everyone at Amazon disappointed by the brilliant Fire Phones failure to launch. Even bringing the phone’s price down to just 99 cents on a two year contract didn’t manage to attract customers.

The result of this failure to launch is a backlog of stock. According to Amazon, the amount they’re sitting on a is a haunting $83 million worth of stock, a number most likely to keep top Amazon heads awake at night.

Amazon isn’t going to leave those phones to rot however, and according to Limp there are plans in place to keep up support for the wayward device for the years to come, just like they did with the Kindle, which started out poorly, but then evolved into a multi-million dollar brand.

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“We are going to keep iterating software features to get it better and better,” said Limp. “Each release that we’re doing, we’re learning. Beyond that, I leave it out there to see what people think.”

It’s hard to get a smartphone out there, even if you’re the biggest online retailer on the planet. Of course, Amazon;s gamble sin other tech areas, such as e-readers and with Fire TV have gone off without a hitch. perhaps this is yet another cautionary tale for tech companies – never underestimate the sheer complexity of the smartphone market.

Regardless of the failure of the original Fire Phone, Amazon is probably going to try again with a new model.

Via: Pocket Lint

Source: Fortune