Amazon Admits to Pricing the Fire Phone Poorly

[dgstorm]

Earlier this week we reported just how much of a flop the Fire Phone was for Amazon. The phone has had abysmal ratings, with only 2.3 stars on Amazon's own product page. Beyond that, the real problem with the phone is that Amazon priced it far too high and basically shot themselves out of the market.

Although this was obvious to anyone on the outside, including consumers, for some reason it wasn't obvious to the executives at Amazon. Otherwise they would have priced it appropriately and it might have done a bit better. Regardless, Amazon has seen the error of their ways and admit that the Fire Phone pricing was wrong. Here's a quote where they recently admitted as much,

“We didn’t get the price right. 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.”
~ Amazon's SVP of devices David Limp

At least the company is willing to shift when necessary. They actually had changed the price down to $1 in September, which lead to a significant sales improvement. (Well... duh!)

What's interesting is that Amazon is still committed to the device and plans to offer sequels in the future. At least this time they plan to price the phone more aggressively to match the market. We will see if the next generation Fire Phone catches fire or fizzles out...

Sidenote: the other problem that Amazon should take a look at is the fact that the phone was an AT&T exclusive. We can't imagine limiting the market for the device to one carrier is a good idea in any way shape or form...

Source: Fortune

 

[xeene]

Should have been $1 from the start on all carriers and then they would make up the difference from app store sales.

 

[boidsonly]

Amazon suffers from the typical Management Bloat that affects most large Corp's-Bezos has become too far removed from the day-to-day operations of his own Corp. If they had priced it according to its specs, rather than try to please the money grubbing shareholders, it might have fared better than it did...

 

[xeene]

Have you guys seen this?
Amazon will develop Fire phone sequels despite the first s failures

 

[dgstorm]

Have you guys seen this?
Amazon will develop Fire phone sequels despite the first s failures

Yes... that's why I included a reference to it in the OP...

"What's interesting is that Amazon is still committed to the device and plans to offer sequels in the future. At least this time they plan to price the phone more aggressively to match the market. We will see if the next generation Fire Phone catches fire or fizzles out..."

 

[cr6]

First time growing pains is going to happen to ANY manufacturer, especially in this particular arena. The fact that they have both the capital behind them and the wherewithal to learn from their mistakes is a huge plus. If this were anyone else I'd say give up now and cut your losses. I guess we'll see with the Fire Phone 2.0.

S5 tap'n

 

[xeene]

I'd rather have them work on delivery drones then phones that everyone already has.

 

[mountainbikermark]

Even at $1 , off contract, I still wouldn't have bought it and won't consider its sequel as long as it's basically a Fire tablet that makes phone calls.

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[pc747]

What's a fire phone?