亚马逊Fire手机失败原因大起底

    他说：“说实话，亚马逊这款手机实在乏善可陈，它的设计本身就太平庸了。”

    布伦纳认为，手机是一种私人物品，人们在挑选手机时会对设计格外在意。与iPhone和Moto X这种连边框侧颜色都可以定制的安卓手机相比，Fire手机毫无特色可言。他最后抛出了一句从技术角度来说堪称登峰造极的鄙薄之语。

    他说：“就激发购买欲而言，我现在把Fire摆在黑莓（BlackBerry）之后。”

    另一个帮不上忙的情况是，不少主流智能手机制造商都希望把用户锁在自家产品生态圈之内，但这款手机堪称有史以来最肆无忌惮的尝试。的确，iPhone一直引导用户使用苹果的各种服务——安卓也会让用户使用谷歌的各种产品——但亚马逊却更进一步，干脆在Fire手机上装了个相当于“购买”的按键。按下这个键，只需几步就能享用两日送达的快递服务了。

    伊夫•比哈尔是一位曾获得大奖的瑞士工业设计师，他的客户包括三星公司、Jawbone公司和赫曼米勒公司（Herman Miller）。他说：“我觉得‘购买’按键有点强迫性。要加入这个功能，其实还有许多更加优雅的好办法。”

    而在这款手机的销售方式上，亚马逊同样晕招频出。你在美国的上千家实体零售店和四大移动运营商处都能看到安卓手机和iPhone。但要买Fire手机却只有少得可怜的几个渠道。如果你想买它，就只能去亚马逊官网、百思买（Best Buy）等少数几家实体零售店，以及它的独家移动运营商美国电话电报公司（AT&T）。

    此外，亚马逊的定价也颇为失败。Fire的定价是200美元，这算是业内标准售价，却跟亚马逊公司长期坚持的低价战略背道而驰。

    就现状而言，马哈尼认为，Fire手机就算降价甩卖，在美国智能手机市场的份额也很难突破10%。实际上，手机降价很难提升销量。比如，美国电话电报公司去年对HTC First（配有以Facebook为中心的软件系统）的降价促销就没能挽救它最终没落的命运。

    但是，如果亚马逊明年能推出设计更具竞争力、销售渠道也更广的新机型，它可能还有反戈一击的机会。它在2011年推出的首款Kindle Fire平板电脑根本不怎么样，但后续升级版则有了显著提升，尽管国际数据公司(IDC)表示，亚马逊在全球平板电脑市场的份额仅有微不足道的0.4%。

    吉列特表示：“这可能并不是我们能看到的最后一款Fire手机。但如果亚马逊已经汲取了教训，那么推出下一款手机时，该公司想必会变得更加低调一些。”

    译者：清远

    “To be totally frank, the Amazon phone has zero cache,” he says. “The design itself is very, overtly neutral.”

    A phone is a personal object and conscious design choice on the part of its owner, Brunner argues. Alongside the iPhone and Android devices like the Moto X, customizable down to the color of its side trim, the Fire phone is nondescript. He went so far as to toss out the ultimate techie insult.

    “I actually put the Fire down below BlackBerry right now as an object of desire,” Brunner says.

    It also didn’t help that Amazon’s phone was the most brazen attempt yet by any major smartphone maker to lock its users into its own ecosystem of products. Certainly, the iPhone has long since steered users towards Apple services — and likewise Android users to Google offerings — but Amazon went one step further by adding what amounts to a “Buy” button on the side of the Fire phone. Click it, and you’re several steps away from two-day delivery.

    “I personally felt the ‘Buy’ button was a bit forced,” says Yves Behar, the award-winning Swiss industrial designer whose past and present clients include Samsung, Jawbone and Herman Miller. “There were more elegant ways to go about introducing that.”

    Amazon also misfired on how it sells the phone. Android devices and iPhones are on the shelves at thousands of physical retailers and all four top U.S. cell carriers. But people can buy the Fire phone at far fewer channels. If you want the phone, your only options are Amazon.com, a few brick and mortar retailers like Best Buy BBY 2.16% , and AT&T T -0.14% , the phone’s exclusive cell carrier.

    Additionally, Amazon stumbled on pricing. Selling the Fire for $200, the industry standard, ran contrary to Amazon’s long-held, company-wide strategy of undercutting the competition.

    As it stands, Mahaney, the RBC analyst, doesn’t expect the Fire phone’s U.S. smartphone market share to crack 10%, even after the price drop. Indeed, price drops on phones rarely lift sales. For example, AT&T’s price cut last year on the HTC First, a phone with Facebook-centric software, didn’t save it from eventually being killed off.

    But Amazon may have a shot next year if it comes up with a newer model with a more competitive design and wider availability. Its first Kindle Fire tablet in 2011 was by no means a home run, but the versions that followed proved substantially better, even if Amazon’s share of the worldwide tablet market remains a miniscule .4%, according to IDC.

    “This probably isn’t the last Fire phone we’ll see,” says Gillett, from Forrester. “But if Amazon has learned anything, the announcement of the next one will be more low-key.”