Amazon blames Fire Phone failure on its price
It probably shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone, but the Amazon Fire Phone turned out to be quite a bust. The device garnered middling review scores all around, and terrible customer review scores; and, Amazon ultimately took a big hit on unsold stock in its quarterly report. Now, Amazon is commenting on the trouble, and is surprisingly blaming the problems on the price of the Fire Phone.
In speaking with Fortune, Amazon's senior vice president of devices, David Limp, said:
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.
That is an accurate statement. Amazon's price tag was far too high at launch ($200), and the price was quickly dropped down to 99 cents on-contract. The trouble with the statement is that it ignores all of the other issues with the device. If you check out the customer reviews on Amazon itself, over half of the reviews are 1-star reviews. And, while some people do mention the price, by far the more prevalent issues listed are: battery life, device overheating, terrible UI, and a lack of apps (specifically, no Google Apps).
Those are the same issues that you'll find in most reviews of the Fire Phone (including our own), and even had Amazon launched the device for free, it wouldn't have helped the hardware and software troubles of the device.
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