“According to a release from Chitika, looking at activity on its ad network in the 20 days after [Amazon’s] Fire Phone’s release, the Fire Phone accounted for 0.02% of activity – although a more precise figure, in another graph, shows it as around 0.015%,” Charles Arthur reports for The Guardian.
“OK – but how many phones might that be? Using data from ComScore, which provides monthly data on US smartphone users, we can get close to a figure,” Arthur reports. “The most recent data from ComScore covers the three months to the end of June 2014: at that time, there were 173m smartphones in use in the US, it said. That figure is rising by between 1m and 2m a month – so two months later, by mid-August, when the Chitika data was collected, we could estimate that there are between 175m and 177m smartphones in use in the US.”
“Based on the ComScore data: 0.015% of 175m = 26,250 Fire phones in use [or] 0.015% of 177m = 26,550 Fire phones in use,” Arthur reports. “You could argue that if the Amazon Fire Phone under-indexes, it probably isn’t by much; you could multiply the number by 25%… That takes you up to about 33,000 devices. Therefore even allowing for margins of error, it seems unlikely – based on Chitika’s data and the ComScore data – that there were more than about 35,000 Fire Phones in use after those 20 days.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote earlier this month:
This is what happens when you create a product designed to benefit your business interests instead of designed to delight your customers.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Bezos’ Misfire: Fire Phone flops like a dying fish – August 11, 2014
Amazon’s Misfire phone could be 2014’s most epic flop – August 6, 2014
Amazon’s Misfire Phone: Why the Fire Phone will fail – July 30, 2014
Wall Street’s patience with Amazon’s losses wears thin – July 29, 2014
The Wall Street Journal reviews Amazon Fire Phone: A gimmicky mess – July 25, 2014
Gizmodo reviews Amazon’s Fire Phone: Don’t buy it – July 23, 2014
Why you shouldn’t buy Amazon’s Fire Phone – June 22, 2014
Amazon Fire Phone could add 55% to users’ shopping bills – June 20, 2014
Amazon’s Misfire Phone: How Jeff Bezos failed – June 19, 2014
Amazon’s Fire Phone might be the biggest privacy invasion ever – June 19, 2014
Analyst: No impact to Apple iPhone from Amazon ‘Fire Phone’ – June 19, 2014
Amazon launches shopping machine masquerading as a phone – June 18, 2014
Amazon Fire Phone’s Firefly feature: Apple’s iPhone already has it – June 18, 2014
Amazon shows ‘Fire Phone’ with 4.7-inch 3-D display to court mobile shoppers – June 18, 2014
Analyst: Amazon smartphone no threat to Apple’s iPhone, but Android phone makers beware – June 17, 2014
Makes no sense! This report is void of any credence as are most other reports that address sales volume for any company. Behemoth Amazon did not only sell 35K phones. Come on man! MDN, the iPhone is just as much about Apple’s business interests as it is about clients being happy. Just look at how many tracking switches exist in iPhones and iPads!
“Tracking switches”
Please explain?
Do your home work ladies…. Apple tracks your every move unless you know how to switch them off. Apple collects and monetizes their data collection like every other tech company which offers mobile devices.
You have proof of this or are you just making assumptions based off “every other tech company” ?
If Apple did the same as every other tech company – with hundreds of millions of users – it would most certainly be a huge source of revenue. And yet, we do not see any significant numbers in any of their quarterly reports.
Apple could easily throw ads into every piece of software they write, but they don’t. The only place we see ads is in traditional media. There aren’t even ads on their free iCloud service. Apple makes devices people are willing to pay more for – they don’t need to pander free-riders.
Another brainwashed disciple! Ask someone intelligent how Apple tracks your every move…. And yes monetize it by selling their tracking data and data capture ability as a means to promote iBeam. Apple is the tech Trojan Horse that will disappoint millions of users as the self righteous onion is peeled.
“tracking switches”
the internal voices are loud today, no?
Oh Jim (anonymous coward)! Who gives a rat’s what you have to say under the ‘Jim’ nick? I’ve been trying to tell you that it’s time to troll under a new faked name. Listen, you stupid troll. Listen!
I bet they sell more toilet paper than they have sold Fire Phones. Although, when you buy one, you will need extra TP I suppose.
Jim, why the Apple hate?? The author was just trying to estimate how many Fire phones were sold. And while I would not spend much money based upon his estimates, he did give his reasons why.
Maybe your a super Amazon supporter??? Or you hated the MDN comments??? But the Apple distaste is pretty clear when you jump right into the iPhone bla, bla, !!
PS, the author commented “So far, though, the Fire Phone looks more like a curiosity than a barnstormer.” So??
Just saying.
Haters just gotta hate. Sometimes it’s circumstance. Sometimes it’s brain damage.
I like what MDN did there with the headline (Bezo / Bozo and his misfire-phone)…
“How Amazon’s Fire Phone Will Beat the iPhone in 3 years”
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/80629.html
Oh, Enderle… What would we do without you, Dvorak, and Ballmer?
Alternate title should be “How this article will ruin any modicum of my professional respectability or integrity within two months”.
Two months? You’re being generous!
=:~)
I want his job. It’s the only job were you can be absolutely stupid, dimwitted, clueless, baseless and get paid. He even gets quoted by mainstream media…and they believe him.
He has the BEST JOB EVER!!!
That the Fire Phone sells more than a couple hundred is a testament to the stupidity of humans in general. As P.T. Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every minute.
Bezos should fire the bozo who came up with the Fire.
Yeah. It is ridiculous. You can get most of the real benefits of the Fire Phone – and none of the hassle – simply by installing Amazon’s apps. Also, the phone’s screen is smaller than the screens of most premium Android phones. Take away the 3D screen and the rotation cameras and the specs for the Amazon phone are about the same as mid-range Motorola, Sony and LG phones that can be had for as little as $250.
This would have been a very good phone 2-3 years ago when it actually had comparable specs to premium Android phones of the day, and the Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy Note was all the range. Now the Android people – both consumers and companies – are making no effort to compete with the iPhone on quality and are now focusing on value: mid-range phones with decent specs that do not need carrier subsidies with 2 year obligations to obscene plans to get the cost down, as well as outright budget phones that cost very little but are still more than adequate to access the Internet and use casual apps i.e. freemium games, Netflix etc.
And the worst thing is that this phone uses their own forked Fire OS when KitKat was very warmly embraced by Android buyers, and everyone is also greatly anticipating Android L, which will be significantly better than Fire OS (which is based on Jelly Bean and will take years to get the performance and security features of Android L, and will never get the vastly improved UI).
Amazon needs to simply clone the Moto G or Sony Xperia hardware, put the bare bones Fire OS with the necessary Amazon apps on it and sell the thing $150 unlocked and give it away for free with a prime subscription and a 2 year contract. That is the only way they will be able to compete with Android L phones and keep their foray into this market from becoming a total debacle.
Alternatively, shoot the damn thing in the head and chalk it up to experience. Only the tech illiterati use Android…or cheapskates!
=:~)
” Only the tech illiterati use Android…or cheapskates!”
Nothing wrong with being a cheapskate. The simple fact is that 90% of the population has no use for the iPhone’s premium features. These folks don’t use the performance/power apps and aren’t in the professions where your phone is a BYOD enterprise device. So for those people, why pay 3 times more when they don’t need to? It is a foolish, unnecessary economic decision.
As for being the tech illiterati, not so sure about that. Android users are actually far more likely to root and customize their phones, including even replace the OEM/carrier OS with ROMs like CyanogenMod or Paranoid Android, as well as install software that basically lets them use their phones as handheld Linux computers. It is one of the reasons why Android is so popular, and they were the first to realize that there was no added value to buying a premium Samsung phone when a mid-range Sony, Motorola or LG could get the job done.
They can always do what Microsoft does: refuse to back down, pour money into it until they begin to get it somewhere near right.
Oh, and he Android “L” is Lollipop, by the way.
I’m shocked Amazon even managed to move 35 thousand devices. Can anyone confirm if it was actual sales or just shipments to retailers ?
Neither. It is based on the number of devices that access their servers, which is used as an online ad network. In order to do this, a device has to be actually activated by a carrier and user, and a web site or app used by the phone has to ping that server. The actual number of Fire phones that have hit that server is only 26,250. But that is conservative, as not everyone who bought the phone may have received it (if they pre-ordered) or activated it yet, and not everyone who has activated has hit that particular web server. So they inflated it to 35,000, being as absolutely charitable as possible. The actual number is probably closer to 30,000.
The one good thing I can see about the mis-Fire phone is that it gives a quite definitive clue to AMZN stockholders that: Yes indeed, AMZN is a bubble stock. Get the hell out now.
You have been warned.
I guess they handed out a lot of freebies to employees.
How else would you move 35k of those?
Imagine an iPhone whose most prominent feature was easy checkout at the Apple-Store (though that may actually come, at some point, with NFC), and the second most prominent a button to call AppleCare….
the kids in the cubicles at MacDump are arrogant, pompous children who simply aggregate Apple news and then post snarky ‘we told you so…’ comments as if they are the genius behind Apple. pathetic.
And yet you’re still here, reading it and commenting on it. You may not like their style, but they’re still right most of the time. Like this time, for example.
“Data Suggests.” They does?