Amazon Fire Phone

Amazon's 3D phone, $199 in July, 99 cents by September, $170 million written off by October

Shut down
19902026

The Fire Phone was Amazon's only smartphone, unveiled by Jeff Bezos on 18 June 2014 and sold from 25 July 2014 through AT&T at $199 on contract. It ran Amazon's Fire OS, showed a 3D "Dynamic Perspective" effect using four front cameras, and had a Firefly button that identified products for purchase. It sold poorly enough that the price fell to 99 cents in September, Amazon wrote off $170 million in October, and the phone was gone by August 2015.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2014
  2. 18 June 2014 Feature
    Jeff Bezos unveils the Fire Phone

    Dynamic Perspective, Firefly, a year of Prime.

  3. 25 July 2014 Launch
    On sale through AT&T

    $199 on contract, $649 unlocked, iPhone prices.

  4. 8 September 2014 Decline
    Price cut to 99 cents

    Seven weeks after launch.

  5. 23 October 2014 Decline
    $170 million written off

    Plus $83 million of unsold phones in Amazon's warehouses.

  6. 2015
  7. 27 August 2015 Shutdown
    Sold out, no successor

    Amazon confirms the phone is finished; Lab126 layoffs follow.

The site through time

Browse amazon.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2014 2015 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Amazon 2014–2015 Founded Designed by Amazon's Lab126 hardware group, built by Foxconn

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: The Fire Phone launched at iPhone prices, exclusive to AT&T, without Google's apps and with headline features, a head-tracking 3D effect and the Firefly product scanner, that reviewers found gimmicky. Sales were so poor that Amazon cut the price to 99 cents within seven weeks, took a $170 million charge in October 2014 with $83 million of unsold phones in stock, and let the phone sell out for good in August 2015 with no successor.

Our analysis: The Fire Phone was designed for Amazon rather than for anyone who might buy a phone: its best trick pointed a camera at a product and offered to sell it to you. Jeff Bezos reportedly approved even the smallest decisions, and the result was a device that competed on price with the iPhone while lacking the app store, the carriers and the reason to switch. Amazon learned the lesson and put the same "buy it now" ambition into the Echo instead.

History [edit]

Bezos's phone

Amazon had been rumoured to be building a phone since 2012, and on 18 June 2014 Jeff Bezos unveiled the Fire Phone at an event in Seattle. It ran Fire OS, Amazon's fork of Android with Amazon's store rather than Google's, and had two features nobody else did. Dynamic Perspective used four infrared cameras on the front to track your head and shift the interface in three dimensions as you moved. Firefly, on its own hardware button, pointed the camera at a product, a book, a song or a phone number and identified it, usually with a link to buy it from Amazon. It came with a year of Prime and Amazon's Mayday live video support.

It went on sale on 25 July 2014, exclusively on AT&T in the United States, at $199 with a two-year contract or $649 unlocked, the same as an iPhone. Bezos was reported to have personally approved decisions down to the smallest detail.

Ninety-nine cents

Reviews called it interesting and asked who it was for: no Google Maps or Gmail, a mid-range screen, a 3D effect that was a party trick and a Firefly button that was, in the end, a shopping shortcut. Sales figures were never released, but a research firm estimated a few tens of thousands sold in the first weeks. On 8 September 2014 Amazon cut the contract price to 99 cents. On 23 October it took a $170 million charge related to the phone in its quarterly results and disclosed $83 million of unsold inventory. Amazon's device chief admitted the following week that it had been priced wrong.

Sold out

Amazon dropped the unlocked price through 2015 and quietly cleared stock; by 27 August 2015 the phone was listed as unavailable and Amazon confirmed it had sold out with no plans for more. Layoffs at Lab126, the hardware group, followed. Fire OS carried on in tablets and Fire TV, Firefly's ideas resurfaced in the Amazon app's camera search, and the company's next attempt to put a shopping button in your life was the Echo, which worked.

The domain today

amazon.com sells no phone of its own. The Fire Phone listing is gone; the device lives on as a favourite of "biggest tech flops" lists and as one of the few times Bezos publicly called a product a failure.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Meet the Fire Phone The Verge 18 June 2014 [archived]
  2. Amazon Fire Phone review The Verge 22 July 2014
  3. Amazon slashes Fire Phone price to 99 cents Mashable 8 September 2014 [archived]
  4. Amazon takes $170M charge on Fire Phone CNET 23 October 2014 [archived]
  5. The Fire Phone flops TechCrunch 23 October 2014 [archived]

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).