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    The Amazon Fire Phone Fail

    Uploaded by

    Manish Sah

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Amazon Fire Phone Fail

    Uploaded by

    Manish Sah
    23 views5 pages

    Original Title

    The Amazon Fire Phone fail

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    23 views5 pages

    The Amazon Fire Phone Fail

    Uploaded by

    Manish Sah

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 5

    The Amazon Fire Phone

    fail
    We all know Amazon. As the world’s largest online retailer,
    most of us interact with the company in one way or another.
    Perhaps you use Amazon Prime to get packages delivered to
    your doorstep at lightning speed, or maybe you’ve turned
    your house into a smart home with an Amazon Echo. But
    there’s one Amazon product you’re not using and likely never
    will: an Amazon Fire Phone.

    The Amazon Fire Phone debuted in July 2014. It was


    Amazon’s attempt to penetrate the smartphone market and
    position the company as cool and innovative instead of just
    cheap and convenient. There was plenty of fanfare leading up
    to its release—after all, Amazon’s Kindle and Echo products
    were hugely popular with consumers. Why would the Fire
    Phone be any different?
    The Fire Phone flopped, and fast. Nobody wanted it. Its hefty
    price tag put off many Amazon customers, its 3D features
    were flashy but largely useless, and its Fire OS operating
    system was incompatible with some of the most popular apps
    out there, like Google Maps. Two months after its release and
    less than 35K units sold, Amazon dropped the price of the
    phone from a base price of $650 dollars to just 99 cents with
    a two-year contract. Amazon reportedly took a $170 million
    loss on the device and had $83 million left in inventory.
    What went wrong? Amazon built the Fire Phone off of
    assumptions about its customers. They made assumptions
    about what customers cared about, how much they were
    willing to pay, and even the apps they’d want on their phone,
    and all of those assumptions proved incorrect.

    Amazon’s three fatal


    assumptions
    Learning design is, in many ways, the same as product
    design. And similar to product design, there’s danger in
    making assumptions during this process—something Amazon
    experienced firsthand. Let’s take a closer look at three
    assumptions Amazon made during the design process that
    ultimately made the phone unsuccessful.

    Dynamic perspective
    One of the Fire Phone’s flagship features was dynamic
    perspective. Amazon’s team invested an inordinate amount
    of time and resources designing a 3D display for the phone,
    including five front-facing cameras and eye-tracking
    technology. Sure, it was a cool feature—but it wasn’t one
    customers asked for and it wasn’t enough to lure them away
    from their Apple or Samsung phones.
    Firefly
    The Fire Phone was the first smartphone to offer barcode
    scanning technology. They coined it Firefly, and it allowed
    customers to use their phone’s camera to scan barcodes on
    products in stores and then buy it on Amazon.

    There are some key flaws at play here. First, Amazon


    assumed customers would rather purchase products on
    Amazon than simply buy them in the store they’re already at.
    Second, they overlooked consumer trends that customers
    preferred to do online shopping from desktop computers
    rather than phones. The value that Firefly offered didn’t
    resonate with consumers.

    Fire OS
    Instead of using an existing operating system, Amazon opted
    to create its own by using a forked version of Android. That
    meant Fire Phone users couldn’t access some of the most
    popular Google and Android apps.

    Amazon assumed that developers would jump at the chance


    to develop apps for Fire Phone—instead, it was an empty
    dance floor. Developers stayed loyal to the major operating
    systems already out there, because that’s where the money
    is. There was no incentive for developers to build for the Fire
    Phone and as a result, no incentive for consumers to buy it.

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