Back in March, it was reported that Amazon was working on another phone, about a decade after the Fire Phone flopped. Now, according to a new interview with Amazon devices chief, Panos Panay, that’s not happening.
Panay says that the company has no plans to try and build another phone, saying that Amazon is not “necessarily going after a phone,” while also acknowledging that mobile technology has changed and the new AI-powered form factors could blur the lines around what counts as a phone.
He also talked about how he doesn’t believe the “phone form factor is going away anytime soon.” Something that he has said publicly already, and is going to keep saying it. Panay did say that he thinks the phone is going through some sort of transformation. Which as we’ve seen with Google recently, it’s mostly turning into an AI machine of sorts.
The Fire Phone is still traumatizing to Amazon, over a decade later
The Amazon Fire Phone launched in 2014, and I was one of the lucky ones who was able to review it back then. The hardware was pretty good for the time; keep in mind that the Fire Phone was not $1,000, it was $649. Still a flagship price for the time, but not quite as pricey as some flagships from Apple and Samsung.
It had IR cameras in each corner of the display, which was not actually all that special. As Motorola had done the same thing on the Droid Turbo. This was basically done so that the phone knew when you were picking it up, and would turn on the display for you. Of course, there are much smaller sensors for that today, that do a much better job. But that did result in some pretty thick bezels.
But the hardware wasn’t really the issue for the Fire Phone. It was the software. Think of using a version of Android without access to the Play Store or any Google apps. Think of using Android without a really robust app store at all. The Amazon App Store was there, but at the time it was a major after-thought.
AT&T had the exclusive on the Fire Phone, and within six weeks, the price had been dropped to $0.99 on a two-year contract, or $199 outright. That was a major discount, and it came incredibly quickly. Showing just how poor the sales truly were.
Amazon later announced a $170 million write-off regarding the Fire Phone as part of its quarterly earnings. That’s a pretty big write-off for a phone that lasted a mere two months.
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