News - Amazon Fire Phone a damp squib: no more than 35,000 units sold

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Data suggests that the online retailer is struggling with sales of its flagship smartphone.

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As it stands at the moment, the market just isn't interested in a brand new smartphone with a brand new OS. I don't see how this phone could ever have succeeded - especially when you can go buy an S5 or an iPhone 5 with the same money and come home with change to spare.

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Originally Posted by AlexKitch

As it stands at the moment, the market just isn't interested in a brand new smartphone with a brand new OS. I don't see how this phone could ever have succeeded - especially when you can go buy an S5 or an iPhone 5 with the same money and come home with change to spare.

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You've got a point there - why buy a phone locked into Amazon's ecosystem when you can get an S5 or one of the many other decent Android phones for less money. Plus, I just did a search on Amazon-UK and it doesn't appear in the results. US only again?

The 3D stuff struck me as a bit of a useless gimmick at the time. And with Amazon's rep I would have thought that a "normal" high end phone that competed on price would have been a better idea. If it has failed then I'm glad - the market isn't big enough for yet another oddball phone OS.

I also wonder how the Kindle Fires are doing. Our oldest wanted one and now hardly uses it because there is very little in the app store for it. he totally wishes he'd asked for a regular Android tablet like his sister.

The only way I see this phone doing anything is if was free and Amazon trying to make their money from content sales.

Amazon has almost flooded the television with commercials on the product (rather clever, at that). And not just on cable, but standard OTA as well. 35k units wouldn't come close to covering the advertising cost at this point.

And, really - comparisons to iPhones? The Apple culture being what it is, the iPhone 6 could be gold foil coated feces, literally, and would do repeat business in the multiple millions on the first day of sale.

And no, I neither work for Amazon, nor do I own a Firephone (or any smart phone, for that matter. My last new phone was an LG Chocolate, and I only got it because it was the cheapest phone I could get that allowed me to change the ringtone myself, and wasn't forced to use MIDI's to do so - and it still rings when someone calls, and I can still talk with it...)

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Originally Posted by Funkstar

I also wonder how the Kindle Fires are doing. Our oldest wanted one and now hardly uses it because there is very little in the app store for it. he totally wishes he'd asked for a regular Android tablet like his sister.

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I'm 99.9% sure that there is a Cyanogenmod build for the Fire, gives you proper Google Play access. Probably worth a look if it's going unused

It looks cool and I was thinking about getting one but there not in the uk so I'm now going to go down the sony rout and get a z2