Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Fire sale on Fire Phone: Amazon's gimmicky 3D handheld drops to $0.99 with pacts

The fire sale puns basically write themselves, but Amazon’s probably not laughing, as the heavy discount on its rookie smartphone effort signals a monumental box-office flop.



Before despair erupts in Amazon’s Seattle, Washington headquarters, it’d be healthy for Jeff Bezos and co. to remember you win some, you lose some. And the e-commerce giant definitely put an unexpected one in the win column back in 2011, when it set sail on shifting Android tablet waters with a device that would then inspire Google’s Nexus 7 and countless affordable clones.

Of course, Kindle Fires gradually lost steam as the slate scene got overcrowded and uber-competitive, which may have been one of the prime reasons Amazon took the gigantic gamble called simply the Fire Phone.

Only the 4.7 incher was everything its 7-inch ancestor wasn’t. Overpriced, ill-advisedly exclusive to just one stateside carrier, gimmicky and mediocre from a specification standpoint.

Once it became available for $200, yes, $200 with two-year contracts, the sales fiasco switched from strong possibility to unavoidable guarantee, and according to data interpreted by The Guardian, Amazon barely shipped 35,000 units in the Fire Phone’s first month on store shelves.



Granted, the news publication merely speculated based on unofficial information, as the handheld’s manufacturers would never confirm such pithy numbers. But if you needed hard evidence virtually nobody bought the “Dynamic Perspective”-sporting gizmo thus far, here it is.

A permanent promotion bringing the price down to $0.01. Both on Amazon, and via AT&T, which is once again the sole wireless service provider to carry the Fire Phone. We’re naturally talking about the 32 GB version, with the model packing 64 GB of internal storage space also marked down, from $299.99 to $99.99.

So yeah, $200 discounts across the board. Desperation at its peak. Especially with 12-month Prime subscriptions still offered as free incentives, meaning basically Amazon pays you to rid them of undesired and undesirable inventory.

Still not a good enough deal? It depends. If you deem the four camera-reliant “3D interface” helpful in any way, I guess it might be worth a shot. Otherwise, staying true to this piece of outdated, 720p screen-boasting, Snapdragon 800-powered mobile technology for two full years may be quite the ordeal.

Source: Amazon PR



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