After being the topic of rumours for years, Amazon finally unveiled its first smartphone earlier this summer. The Amazon Fire Phone launched to lukewarm reception at best and may well end up an abject failure for the company. While Amazon has not provided any sales figures, The Guardian’s Charles Arthur did a little digging and came up with an estimate based on data from the Chitika ad network and Comscore U.S. smartphone user numbers. He estimates that Amazon has likely sold fewer than 35,000 Fire Phones since it went on sale in July.
Arthur warns that “lots of caveats apply: this is a calculation based on two non-congruent sets of samples, though both are large enough to be robust.” But even if the numbers are off by a margin, it’s likely that the Amazon Fire Phone will go down in history as a flop.
While the device itself and its unique 3D interface may be partly to blame for the lacklustre sales, the fact that it launched as an AT&T exclusive likely also contributed as it is unavailable to consumers on other U.S. carriers. Pricing may have also contributed as it sells for as much as the Apple iPhone 5S or Samsung Galaxy S5, premier devices with well-established credentials.
It remains to be seen if we will see a second smartphone from Amazon later this year or in 2015. Rumours have regularly suggested that an entry-level model, sometimes identified as Project Aria, was also in the works.
Source : The Guardian