The writing has been on the wall almost since the beginning. With terrible reviews, even worse sales, and recent reports of engineers who had worked on the device losing their jobs, the Amazon Fire Phone did not seem long for this world.
And now its done for good. RIP Fire Phone.
Amazon has sold its entire Fire Phone inventory across the globe, meaning that there are no more to buy, the company confirmed to VatorNews on Wednesday. Amazon also said that it has no plans to replenish stock at this time.
So if you really wanted a Fire Phone for some reason, and you wanted a new one, you’re out of luck. You can probably find a refurbished one somewhere, either online or maybe in an AT&T store, but that’s all you’re going to get now.
If I had bought a Fire Phone previously, I’d be a little worried now, but Michelle Taylerson, Senior PR Manager at Amazon, assures me that those users will not be left out in the cold.
“Of course, we’ll continue supporting our Fire phone customers,” she said.
The Amazon Fire Phone has had a rough life. It was released in June of last year to pretty harsh reviews sales turned out to be abysmal. They were so bad that that Amazon dropped the price to 99 cents a whole two months after its debut.
In October of last year it was revealed that sales missed so badly, with only 35,000 sold in the quarter, that the company had to take $170 million write off just to cover the loss.
Any hope that it would repeat the success of Amazon’s Kindle Tablet faded quickly and, last month, reports came down that Amazon had fired dozens of engineers who were working on the Fire Phone.
The workers had been employed at Lab126, the company’s secretive hardware-development center in Silicon Valley. This is the first time that there were any layoffs at the division, which was founded 11 years old, back in 2004.
The failure of the Fire Phone seemed to have a big effect on Amazon’s entire hardware division, as we it was reported that, in addition to the Fire Phone that is going to be cut back, other projects that the company had also has scaled back or halted as well, including work on a large-screen tablet.
In fact the entire division is being reorganized, with two hardware units being combined into one. There are 3,000 employees working at Lab126, and it is unknown how many were let go in this purge.
That is not to say that Amazon is giving up on hardware by any means. It has seen tremendous success with its Kindle tablets, and the company is still said to be working on projects that include high-end computer for the kitchen, which is code-named Kabinet. I is designed to serve as a hub for an Internet-connected home and capable of taking voice commands for tasks like ordering merchandise from Amazon.com.
It is also said to still be working on a 3D tablet, as well as Kindle battery that will have a 2 year charge.
The cuts are also a sign of changing Amazon. The company was famous for not ever showing much profit, always putting whatever money it made back into the company, specifically to develop its products. In the most recent quarter, however, Amazon suddenly started to cut those costs, resulting in $92 million worth of profit.
This news was first reported by the Verge.
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