That's true but that doesn't mean Huawei is making great profits selling phones in India.
An Android is good to talk on the phone, get SMS, and throw it out after 2 years. If it charges when you plug it into the charger 90% of the time you are doing pretty good.
In rural areas of the United States we have a system of factory constructed housing which is scaled in cost to the low cost of land.
Go into such a "trailer" (I have) and you may likely find somebody with a Amazon Fire tablet who is not really sure that it has anything to do with Amazon or that it is a Fire, etc.
It is a great piece of hardware for what it costs, you can get most of the software you want to work on it by sideloading and have better luck than Bluestacks, SHIELD and similar solutions. (No matter what they will serve up offensive ads for games you will never play.)
People say "Android Tablets are dead" but no the Fire is very viable if you want something to read PDF files on the bus and not feel bad to treat it rough because the replacement cost is so low.
Amazon devices are sold because they’re cheap ebook readers.
Huawei has only been blocked from dealing with the US, but as a result it’s been killed around the world after being one of the leading low-cost brands. Why? No Google.
Take out the Play Store and Play APIs and now you’re just a random Chinese Android manufacturer.
First, Amazon is in the tablet business, which is a very different beast from phones. Case in point: carriers.
Also, they're selling Fire tablets at below cost. That'd be horrifying for Nokia's finances. Not to mention that Kindle Fire's sales crashed hard after the initial holiday rush.
Meanwhile, LG, Sony, Acer, etc. etc. are in losses with Android and HTC is barely ekeing out a small profit. That demonstrates, how smart Nokia was not to just into this pool
It's obvious why Amazon made a phone. Profit. People visit Amazon. Amazon has millions of customers. Sell them something else and Amazon makes even more money.
Amazon isn't trying to make the best product in the world but I'm not gonna lie, the Kindle Fire newest version is pretty good compared to the first models.
To finish my statement, Amazon is sucking up revenue wherever possible. They aren't trying to win the smartphone race but just trying to get a piece of the pie. It's smart and profitable.
You're underestimating Amazon's software muscle, they have some very hard hitting teams. Plenty of PhDs, old-time Lispers, etc.
I have a Kindle Fire HDX 8.9' tablet, the hardware is top notch and there are plenty of apps. From what I know, if an Android app doesn't heavily rely on Google proprietary APIs, like Maps, it's trivial to put it on the Amazon store.
But yeah, the phone needed to be 2-3 times cheaper to sell well.
This will be tough given their business model. Plenty of very strong android phones can be bought for free on contract, and off contract phones have already scratched <$100 for okay android hardware.
Amazon said their strategy with the Fire was to make it as affordable as possible. They know they make their money back in app/book/video sales. However, there is no room for a budget Android phone any more. The only way they can conceivably go is up towards the high-end, but that seems antithetical.
Only real selling point I can see for an Amazon device is video from Prime, which would require good data plans that I doubt major carriers would be happy to offer.
Looks horrendously expensive and only has average specs, significantly worse than the S5 which will probably be my next phone, and it doesn't have CyanogenMod support, an SD card, or a removable battery; not to mention that as it's amazon it's probably locked down to fuck and exists to sell worthless 'cloud'... I'd rather buy an HTC phone than that, which has all those drawbacks but can still have CyanogenMod installed on it, plus isn't funding Amazon...
Oh, and apparently it doesn't have the play store, so it running android is essentially worthless, especially if amazon disabled apk installation in the process of locking you into their services. Fire Phone has to be called that because if you try it, you'll get burnt.
The Kindle Fire could outsell other Android tablets combined by 10x, and it'd still be outsold 10x by Android phones, and that's what makes it fairly ridiculous.
It's not that the Kindle Fire isn't a great product, it's that it's not relevant to the primary Android market - cheaper smart phones for the 99% of people around the world who can't afford an iPhone.
Yes, the Fire Phone was a stunning success, and clearly evidence you can compete with Google's proprietary Android offering with your own fork. /s
I would argue Kindles are largely successful because they don't compete with proprietary Android in any appreciable metric: Google-flavored Android barely even attempts to compete in the tablet market, and Kindles are e-readers first, and tablets second.
I got a Fire phone when they went on sale for $199 (and it included a year of free Prime, which I usually pay $99 a year for, so $100 phone). It was a terrible phone. I hated it more every day I used it. Even once I'd added Google Play Store and could install most Google apps, it just wasn't a good phone. The changes they made from stock Android were almost universally negative for usability and enjoyment, and because it was a forked Android, it ended up being a couple years behind Android mainline on release day (it was forked from Android 4.x, and 6.x came out maybe a few months after the Fire phone...something like that).
It was a relief when my girlfriend dropped it and cracked the screen and I had to replace it (I bought a Blu Life One X2, which is a longwinded name for a generic nearly stock Android device that is competent in all areas and excels in none, but is very cheap for its specs). I've been much happier since switching.
I hated it so much I think I'll wait a long while before considering an Amazon mobile device. Of course, according to the article, it's not targeting the US market, which may be smart, since they screwed up so badly in the US market (though it sold so poorly, I don't guess very many people have my level of distaste for Amazon mobile devices, since not a lot of people have actually used one).
Fire phone was a flop from the start. Substandard hardware and premium price tag do not mesh well together. Amazon thought that they could make software killer feature and sell phone trough massive advertising and sheer brand power. That is a tall order, and I am not surprised they failed.
However, if I learned anything about Amazon it is their tenacity. They will keep improving and pouring billions into Fire until it works, like they've done with their Cloud business. I think pulling HP Touchpad is not an option because they are too much invested in mobile strategy. So with all that said, while I am not surprised that first Fire phone flopped, I eventually expect Amazon to have at least limited success.
I think many people underestimate the success of Amazon's Fire tablets.
I took one of the best photos that I took in the last ten years on a Fire tablet: that's a combination of the camera being "good enough" (though nowhere near as good as my iPad's camera) and being at the right place at the right time.
There was that time I was walking down the road and ran into a woman who had a huge dog that put its paws up on my shoulders and tried to push me down (in a friendly way.) She invited me into her trailer and I saw that a Fire tablet was her only computer. Although she'd never heard of Android and didn't seem so sure that Amazon had anything to do with it she was reading email, sharing photos, watching videos and doing most of what people do in their digital life.
Fire will be hard to beat for a few reasons: (1) Amazon subsidizes the devices and can afford to do so because the device sucks people into the Amazon ecosystem, and (2) Amazon makes smart choices about what features to include and which not to.
I used to have a Nexus 7 and I liked it a lot but it was packed with sensors that pushed up the BOM. Amazon is able to make tough decisions that Google somehow just can't do.
Moreover, Google (through Motorola) will soon make an as-good-or-better tablet at the same price point as the Fire. The Fire is a direct threat to Google's tablet ambitions, and Google has much more cash with which to subsidize tablets. In addition, Google has a monetization strategy (ads + content) which is better than Amazon's (content). Heck, even search ads alone is probably better than Amazon's content model. Amazon's ad. monetization is weak because they don't have a search engine nor a real locality ad. platform.
Yes, Amazon is efficient and plays to win. However, given what Motorola and Samsung have been producing, I think people had justifiable skepticism. Even the WiFi-only, 7" Galaxy Tab is priced at $350 (75% more than the Kindle Fire). Granted, Amazon seems to have more of a "game-console" product cycle with the Kindle series. If they don't have to up the specs every 6-12 months with a new processor, display, etc. they'll be able to get a lot more money for the same design.
My feeling on the Fire phone was just that they build the wrong phone for their audience. They built the Moto X when they should have built the Moto G.
There is a market for a really solid Android phone for say $150 off contract. Amazon could have partnered with any number of prepaid providers and also normal providers to have "the best deal in wireless".
They built a whole market around driving down prices and reaching a mass audience, then they compete with top end phones. If the Kindle Fire was $500, it would have flopped. The $600 Fire Phone DID flop.
It feels like Kindle tech's value proposition is quality technology at an unbeatable price. The Fire Phone didn't hit that at all.
I think the Fire might have been more usable for people in general, that is easier for normal people to setup and start consuming Amazon content. I don't have a strong opinion on this though as I think all Android tablets I've seen are crap (does not include Nexus 7 which I have not seen yet).
> I've seen Amazon's Fire tablets sell for $39 brand new.
Agreed -- there's a big subsidy from Amazon there. But LCD screens and much of the same parts as computers+phones have had big economic forces driving the prices down.
Yes - Amazon has done well in tablet space but that isn't because of Android.
Most of the things that sell Amazon Fire are its really cheap price (it is probably a loss leader), seamless Amazon's Kindle and Content integrations (such as Prime as well as FreeTime). However, there are no Google Apps on it - no maps, no gmail, no Youtube etc. It is a really hamstrung experience if you have used their product.
Android is much much bigger than Amazon tablet and to say Amazon is eating away at Android is a disingenuous statement.
An Android is good to talk on the phone, get SMS, and throw it out after 2 years. If it charges when you plug it into the charger 90% of the time you are doing pretty good.
In rural areas of the United States we have a system of factory constructed housing which is scaled in cost to the low cost of land.
Go into such a "trailer" (I have) and you may likely find somebody with a Amazon Fire tablet who is not really sure that it has anything to do with Amazon or that it is a Fire, etc.
It is a great piece of hardware for what it costs, you can get most of the software you want to work on it by sideloading and have better luck than Bluestacks, SHIELD and similar solutions. (No matter what they will serve up offensive ads for games you will never play.)
People say "Android Tablets are dead" but no the Fire is very viable if you want something to read PDF files on the bus and not feel bad to treat it rough because the replacement cost is so low.
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