Losing my Amazon Religion
20 Aug 2014 • marco.orgMarco Arment writing about the Fire Phone:
The e-ink Kindles sell because other e-ink devices were so horrible for so long, and the Kindles’ hardware and software design flaws don’t have major impacts on the basic needs of dedicated reading devices. The Kindle Fires sell because they’re much cheaper than iPads.
But Amazon simply doesn’t have the product-design and consumer-software skills to compete in the smartphone space, where competition is fierce, typical usage extends far beyond simple media consumption, Amazon’s not dramatically undercutting prices, and prices in much of the developed world are so heavily subsidized that the potential to undercut prices in the future is limited.