Down in Flames: The Tragic Fate of Amazon’s Fire Phone
When Amazon introduced the Fire Phone in 2014, it seemed like the company could not fail. For well over a decade, Amazon’s profits have soared alongside several highly successful product lines, including the Kindle line of E-readers and the Echo line of smart home speakers. However, the catastrophic failure of their Fire Phone is proof that no company’s record or reputation can protect them from destructive assumptions leading the way on development.
By 2014, the smartphone market had already decided on a split of market share for two different priorities. With Apple’s iPhone, consumers were getting an intuitive and straightforward interface, the convenience of Apple’s large media and productivity ecosystems, and bragging rights for owning a device from a well-established lifestyle brand. With stock Android phones, users could choose unthrottled access to boundary-pushing specs with higher-end phones from Samsung, or budget-friendly phones that still met all of their needs and provided reliable access to the social media and online services one had come to expect from their smartphone in 2014.
Amazon decided to enter the market based on a few assumptions which had little basis in actual user research, but rather relied on the experience and track record of founder Jeff Bezoz, who played a major role in leading development for the Fire Phone.
First, they assumed the Amazon ecosystem would move units no matter what.
Second, they assumed their gimmicky new “Dynamic Perspective” feature (which used 5 front-facing cameras to track a user’s facial movements) would move units simply because of its novelty.
Finally, they assumed the device was good enough to establish them as a lifestyle brand like Apple, and matched the company’s steep $650 price point.
The problem with assuming that Amazon’s ecosystem would sell the phone on its own was not so outlandish; the company does have a vast ecosystem for things like quickly buying products online, their top-notch Alexa voice assistant, and their refined Kindle E-reader system. The problem was the assumption that any of these features would sell a smartphone. iPhones and Android phones could already run the Amazon Store and Kindle apps, and Alexa could be controlled and set up from either too. Users of these other operating systems already had sufficient and satisfying access to the ecosystem through these apps, and there was never a need expressed for a standalone device to take advantage of them.
“Dynamic Perspective” was an innovative feature that did not solve any needs, conscious or unconscious, that consumers of smartphones had in 2014. Coordinating five cameras to track the user’s face was a technological feat, but ultimately it had little practical application. Use was mostly limited to controlling games and using facial scanning to unlock the phone. Facial scanning would rise to greater prominence several years later, but at the time the market was unconvinced that the feature was worth leaving their comfort zones of iOS or stock Android for. The feature was ultimately just an attempt to be flashy and innovative, which would help to brand Amazon as another Apple sort of brand, always pushing technological boundaries and creating tailored experiences out of technology for its users. Without any real need for this feature, however, and with no new user problems solved by creating and implementing it, the Fire Phone could not be sold just for its novelty. Even former development team members are quoted as saying “we poured surreal amounts of money into developing it, yet we all thought it had no value for the customer, which was the biggest irony. Whenever anyone asked why we were doing this, the answer was, ‘because Jeff wants it. ‘“ 1
Perhaps it was those high costs of development that made Amazon think its $650 price tag was justified, but the market disagreed. Apple’s iPhone 6, which would sell 10 million units in its first three days on sale, was the same price, and consumers saw much more value in access to Apple’s own ecosystem, higher-end features, more appealing design, fashionable reputation, and perceived social status. No user was looking for flashy and quirky new features if it meant investing outside of the brand they knew and loved, which was already 8 years deep in developing for smartphone users and decades-deep in brand establishment. Furthermore, users of stock Android devices didn’t see any reason to switch either. For them, having high-end specs and unblocked access to Google’s ecosystem was a major selling point. Many Android users rebelled from Apple’s brand because they rejected the company’s mainstream appeal in favor of something more powerful and customizable. The Fire Phone didn’t offer that either; its Fire OS was a throttled version of Android customized to only allow access to Amazon’s ecosystem and app store.
Amazon’s Fire Phone was a failure in 2014 because the company made assumptions about the power of its brand and a new gimmick that was not backed by user research or market analysis. While Amazon had a strong ecosystem in place, it was already accessible on other operating systems and offered no unique benefits to its own dedicated smartphone as a medium of usage. “Dynamic Perspective” was innovative in its own right, but it had no practical applications that solved problems for users or made any task easier. Lastly, Amazon wanted to use the phone as the single product that would establish their brand as a lifestyle brand rather than one for budget consumption, which made their Apple-matched $650 price tag seem unreasonably high. Amazon has a lot of power behind its development team, so it’s a shame that money was wasted creating a product that did not offer any value to consumers or cater to the real needs of users in the smartphone market. Rather, it was an attempt to show off development chops and pivot branding by Jeff Bezos, which, given that it didn’t serve users at all, was a catastrophic failure.
1 Source referenced: https://slidebean.com/blog/startups-amazon-fire#:~:text=But%20what%20Amazon%20got%20most,worth%20of%20it%20in%20inventory.
