“In my article titled “The Hail Mary Phone”, I had already explained how Amazon.com’s incoming Fire Phone was very likely to flop. This was so because buying that phone required deep ignorance of what the smartphone market is providing, both in terms of choice and pricing,” Paulo Santos writes for Seeking Alpha. “Additionally, the phone had weak mid-tier specifications and yet was priced at the same levels as Apple’s and Samsung’s flagships. At the time, however, the phone was not yet physically available, so it flopping in terms of pre-orders was not the be all and end all for this argument.”
“The phone has been available for delivery since July 25. This means that Amazon.com has started taking reviews on the phone, and its best sellers’ list now reflects sales instead of just orders. And what has happened? Right at availability time, the phone climbed to 20th or so on that list, which would already be bad,” Santos writes. “This was helped both by Amazon.com advertising and widespread (if unfavorable) reviews. Ever since, however, the same thing happened as with pre-orders. It started tanking and then tanking some more. It now floats in the lowly 60s-100s in the best sellers’ list in electronics.”
“At these levels, we know the selling is a trickle,” Santos writes. “The phone will be lucky to sell 100-200k units over a year, which should be enough to turn it into another unprofitable boondoggle.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is what happens when you create a product designed to benefit your business interests instead of designed to delight your customers.
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