Amazon didn’t have much luck convincing the people to buy its Fire Phone. But the largest online retailer in the world isn’t entirely discouraged just yet. A new report suggests that the company is working on a follow-up edition of the phone. But it may not hit the shelves until 2016, reports VentureBeat.
According to sources, Amazon is “back to the drawing board” to figure out why Fire Phone wasn’t a success and how to make it a success with the next iteration of the device.
It’s surprising that Amazon is going to rethink the entire phone project over a year-long period. One might think that the company would take its time and release the phone to capture the Holiday shoppers next year. But Amazon is going to skip the entire next year and put all that time into planning and developing the perfect phone.
In its Q3 2013 financial reports, the company stated that it had $170 million charges in unsold inventory of the Fire phone. Amazon reduces its price significantly since its launch, at one point it even gave away the phone for free with a two-year AT&T contract, but still failed to capture as much attention as it wanted. The only people giving attention to Fire Phone seemed to be from the press.
Amazon is famous at selling new products. It pretty much invented the e-reader market and has been successful in selling Kindle devices for years. However, its Fire Phone failed to achieve much success despite some of the unique features it packs such as Firefly and a 3D interface. Experts say that Amazon tried to sell an expensive device to a market that has already plenty of expensive phones. It didn’t matter that the company lowered the price later.
However, Amazon is still slowly building up reputations. Where many companies abandon their popular phones in a couple of years, Amazon is still pushing major updates to its Fire Phone despite its lack of popularity and poor sales. Those who have gotten themselves an Amazon Fire Phone trusting Amazon has nothing to regret.
The company released a major update recently that introduces a handful of new features. The Fire OS version 3.5.6 features an exclusive search and recognition feature that can recognize famous art pieces and artifacts using what is called Firefly Visual Search System. It can now identify over 2,000 of famous paintings once the update has been installed.
https://thehoopsnews.com/2014/12/21/2733/t-mobile-pay-90-million-settle-mobile-cramming-case-ftc/
Other new features include Best Shot that lets you choose the best photo from three shots, choosing seven pre-loaded language packs, the music controlling ability from the lock screen, custom ringtones, editing documents using preloaded WPS Office app, sync calendars across multiple Fire devices and so on.
https://thehoopsnews.com/2014/12/21/2751/google-cardboard-business-view-makes-window-shopping-home-possible/
Another neat feature readers will love is the ability to go to the next page when reading a book from Kindle on the Fire Phone without having to touch the screen. The feature is called Auto Scroll and will make reading on a relatively small device easier.
