Amazon's Gadget Business

Amazon has been making various gadgets for years now. Kindles being the most popular. When Amazon released the Kindle Fire, it was meant as not only an e-reader, but a cheaper competitor for the tablet market. Unfortunately, Amazon is viewing this business all wrong. Instead of capitalizing on the e-reader market they're trying to branch out into the tablet and smartphone industry. This is a bad move considering they can't compete.

Amazon's smart devices run Fire OS, a fork of AOSP or Android. Fire OS doesn't include the Google Play Store or any Google services at all. Amazon has completely taken their fork in a different direction away from Google. While this isn't terrible, it certainly means the devices will lose a lot of features that Google already has in place with Android.

Now it's time to talk about one of the biggest flops in tech history. The Amazon Fire Phone. When it was released, it could be considered a mid-range phone. What made it "special" was its 3D software which used sensors to make the interface appear 3D. It was pretty gimmicky and honestly, nobody wanted the feature. For a mid-range phone from a company new to the smartphone game, you would expect a cheaper price, right? Well, apparently Amazon overestimated itself. When the phone was released, it was for an off-contract price of $650 and an on-contract price of $199. That was as much as a new Samsung Galaxy or iPhone. Needless to say, nobody was getting this phone. Sales plummeted, resulting in an over $200 price drop for both models. Even still, Amazon practically had to give these things away with free Amazon Prime memberships included. Amazon finally ran out of stock in 2015 and it doesn't look like they plan to release another phone anytime soon.

Just because their phone strategy failed, doesn't mean Amazon's done. Amazon has been hard at work making worse versions of already existing products. Amazon Fire Stick, for example, is basically a copy of Google's Chromecast. Even better? Amazon banned the sale of Chromecasts on their website because it would be "confusing for customers" to have both products for sale. Amazon Echo is an ambitious product, for sure, but like the Fire Phone, I don't see any reason for anyone to get it. Echo is basically a large speaker with microphones in it, allowing you to ask it questions and it will respond. Sounds cool when you forget that almost all smartphones have this feature. Plus, for $179, I would expect something better.

All-in-all, Amazon needs to calm down about its gadget production and focus on its market and website. I realise that Amazon has to continue to evolve to make it, but the paths it's taking aren't going to get it anywhere.