A year after its release, Amazon Fire Phone is officially sold out.
The "currently unavailable" sign on the product page hints at this conclusion, and a spokesperson from the company confirmed that, by the end of August, Amazon's inventory of Fire Phones was globally exhausted.
Amazon entered the smartphone market in 2014, with models of 32GB and 64GB that the company praised as going on toe with more established names such as Samsung and Apple. The price was as steep as the competition's flagship models, with a Fire Phone initially selling for $649 unlocked.
The phone's configuration showed 2.2GHz Quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, with Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB of RAM; 13MP digital camera; 4.7-inch LCD display, 1280 x 720 px; 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi; up to 300 Mbps with channel bonding; Bluetooth LE 4.0 wireless technology; NFC enabled; and Fire OS 3.5 under the hood.
The producers took pride in the smartphone's capacity to navigate the user interface using dynamic perspective. It also hosted a service dubbed Firefly that was supposed to help owners find and identify books, DVDs, phone numbers, and songs. The reaction among consumers was rather cold, which caused purchases to linger. After October last year, Amazon attempted several sales strategies to convince clients of the Fire Phone's value.
Initially, it cost $199 with a two-year AT&T contract. When this strategy produced feeble results, Amazon dropped the price tag to 99 cents, offering the phone with a two-year wireless contract on AT&T. In a bold marketing move, the Seattle retailer trimmed the price of the Fire Phone to a mere $60, offering a year of Amazon Prime free of charge.
The standard price for one year of Prime is $99, for which you get access to more than one million songs and over 800,000 eBooks, earlier entrance to special deals on Amazon.com and extra fast deliveries on 20 million items.
For Amazon fans who really wanted a Fire Phone, there is still hope. eBay seller qualitycellz sold over 17,000 Amazon Fire Phones after the inventory of the producer ran out. The 32GB version of the smartphone, now sold out on eBay as well, was offered with a year of Prime subscription for $139, essentially making the device cost $40.
The 64GB models are still available in limited quantity, for only $149, including Prime membership.
