Amazon doesn’t want to give up on its attempt to make a name for itself on the smartphone market. The first Amazon Fire phone was not received too positively by critics or consumers and was soon forgotten.
Now the giant online retailer has announced that it’s currently working on a new phone called Amazon Fire Phone 2 and it’s expected for release in 2016. Tech blogs said that Amazon has been working on their upcoming phone for months but returned to the drawing board after the first attempt failed.
Amazon did not comment too many details about the new phone but in October they said that they will not give up the Fire Phone idea and hoping it will catch on like their most famous product, the Kindle electronic reader, which is the most popular e-reader around. The Kindle was not received too positively when it was first released so Amazon is hoping that the same will happen with the Amazon Fire Phone 2.
Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices, David Limp said that they will keep working on the new phone and improve the software on it. He added that with each new product Amazon releases they learn something new. Limp said that there’s nothing more they can do but release a product and hope that people will like it.
Amazon has been struggling with the first version of Fire Phone since it was release this summer.
Because of the poor sales, the company lost approximately $170 million in the last quarter of 2014. It was left with more than $83 million worth of unsold smartphones. Although the Fire Phone comes with some pretty special features like the 3D parallax display and the Firefly identification software, people remained unimpressed and the phone was soon forgotten, not selling very well.
Limp said that one of the reasons the first Fire Phone failed was because of its high price. The Fire Phone was first released exclusively at AT&T for $199 (32GB) and $299 (64GB) on contract. Following the poor sales, the price was dropped to 99 cents.
Amazon Fire Phone 2 is hoping to make it up for its predecessor’s mistakes.
Image Source: androidcentral