The mobile industry has seen substantial growth in the past few years. Facebook had launched a mobile venture which failed to make any impact on the saturated smart-phone market. Amazon.com (AMZN -1.14%) chose to ignore the inglorious tale of the failure and decided to come out with its own handset, the Amazon fire phone. The phone does not have the specification or the price to compete with the likes of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Samsung.
What about the specifications?
The smartphone is a highly competitive industry. Original equipment manufacturers try their best to either lead the high-end segment with superior specifications, or they cut-down prices to penetrate the market. The Fire phone, with a 4.7 inch 720p IPS LCD, Snapdragon 800 , and a 13 MP back camera, seems to replicate the high-end phones of the last year with no-compromise on the prices. This indicates that the phone will not be able to compete with the current high-end devices.
The Fire phone's form factor is yet another issue to be considered before consumers decide to make their pockets heavier; literally. The Fire phone is bulkier and heavier than most of the phones in this price range.
Why the fire phone is destined to fail?
Price is a serious issue when it comes to being noted in the fiercely competitive mobile industry. The phone will be available off-contract for $649 , which is certainly in the high-end smartphone range. A Samsung galaxy S5 costs around $660-$700 off-contract, and an iPhone 5s costs up to $849 off-contract. It seems, the Fire phone costs a little too much for the 720p 4.7 inch screen with a pixel density of 312 ppi. Existing players in the market have consistently launched 1080p and 2160p (LG G3) with a whooping 441ppi and 534ppi screens for quite some time now.
The FireOS delivers another debilitating blow to Amazon's chances of success with its latest handset. The FireOS is basically an extension of the Amazon website based on Android. You cannot access Google services on your firefly. This is a deal breaker for the majority of android phone owners, who are inclined toward Google services. The Google play store currently offers more than a million apps.
Credit: Amazon
The new features, including the 3D perspective and the Firefly, may not add much value for smartphone buyers. Quite frankly, I believe, this is not a feature that can lure the consumer to buy an expensive phone with the specifications not at par with the other high-end phones. The Firefly feature allows you to find the information on any object you point your camera at. The phone's camera detects the object just like a bar-code reader app that deciphers the bar-code through your camera.
In contrast to the bar-code reader app that only detects the bar-code, the type of objects that can be scanned by this phone is extremely vast. You could supposedly find-out the ingredients in a bag of candies just by pointing your camera at it.
Foolish bottom line
Fire phone, probably, will not be successful amid unfavorable pricing, outdated performance, and the lack of decisive innovation. It certainly will not take the market share away from the industry giants. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, should have launched Firefly as an app on the Google play store instead of making a separate phone for that. He could have potentially reached a larger number of customers on the Google play store.
