Amazon Fire Phone burns through profits
Since the introduction of the Amazon Fire phone the biggest question I’ve heard about it was “do I really want a phone that seems to be marketed to pretentious hipster eight year olds?” The answer evidently was no as Amazon just posted its second-straight quarterly loss of $544 million.
Yup, a half billion dollar sting for making us put up with those annoying commercials day and night sounds like about just punishment.
However, the Fire Phone isn’t completely to blame and there are other factors which rain on my parade, but I can pretend it’s my most hated commercial of all time if that’s what gets me through the day.
Amazon’s attempt at using Android but cutting out all that makes you want Android has always irked me, but the Fire Phone felt like it was mostly a way to shove Prime down the throats of the people who have steadfastly refused it by introducing a couple of features that while neat, were nothing to purchase a phone over.
Those commercials worked pretty good to shoot themselves in the foot too. Who was their target audience?
Whatever the case, the only people in hot water are Amazon investors. Amazon itself has a billion dollars to play with (that’s six more months of Fire Phone losses,) and a two billion loan from BOA to do some serious investment in expansion (are they finally going to buy the USPS?)
The Amazon Fire Phone doesn’t quite join the ranks of the Facebook Phone, but by the time it isn’t a loss for Amazon it will be well past its Prime, which it came bundled with.
[The Verge]
