
Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices - shawndumas
http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-curtails-development-of-consumer-devices-1440632203
======
mentos
"In essence, we were not building the phone for the customer—we were building
it for Jeff"

[http://www.fastcompany.com/3039887/under-
fire](http://www.fastcompany.com/3039887/under-fire)

~~~
LiweiZ
It seems not quite different from what Jobs did. The real difference is the
degree of vision associated with reality.

~~~
macintux
Steve obsessed over details that would benefit users; Bezos apparently forced
choices that would benefit Amazon. Seems quite a bit different.

~~~
kzhahou
Please list the features that were patently anti-user and done for Amazon's
sole benefit.

~~~
aggie
Parent comment didn't say anti-user, but the dedicated hardware button for
identifying and purchasing goods from Amazon is pretty ridiculous. It's like
an Amazon Dash button in your pocket all the time. It's hard to argue they
weren't thinking Amazon-first on that one.

------
an4rchy
Amazon fires Fire phone engineers.... /s

TBH it sucks that the developers are the first ones to go , when it generally
isnt their fault... it's bad product management/sales/strategy that caused the
device to fail...

~~~
gjolund
Why is this always the case?

I've been on a couple of projects that were complete flops, devs are always
first to go. Meanwhile the idiots who actually wasted all the money and
bloated the feature set start working on version "2.0".

~~~
megablast
Simple.

If you are a designer, you can go work on another project.

If you are a BA, you can go work on another project.

If you are a manager, you can go work on another project.

If you are an mobile developer/hardware engineer, and they aren't building any
more OS/hardware, they can't move you onto another project.

~~~
bduerst
Amazon produces mobile apps for other platforms, and is shipping hardware like
Alexa.

If anything, these layoffs seem to correllate with some of the commentary in
the recent NYT article about Amazon.

~~~
jon-wood
Theres a difference between making mobile Apps and making a mobile OS. Keeping
people with those skills on to work on the Amazon Android app feels to me like
hiring Linus Torvalds because you want to release a Linux version of your
software.

~~~
bduerst
Which would make perfect sense if they didn't can the hardware engineers too.

------
blinkingled
I wonder if the outcome would've been any different if they had not forked the
n-1 version of Android and instead shipped something like a Moto G3 with stock
Google stuff combined with Amazon customizations. With a cheap price, great
customer service and timely updates it would've made a dent sooner or later.

After all who wants a phone without GMail, Chrome and GMaps? Amazon didn't do
anything to compensate the lack - except for may be the Silk Browser which to
me wasn't anything spectacularly good compared to Mobile Chrome.

~~~
rifung
Honestly I'd take a cheap phone with no Amazon customizations. I don't think
you can ship an Android phone with Google Apps and not with the Play Store
though, and I can't imagine Amazon would want that since they have their own
Market to promote.

On the other hand, it wasn't like the phone was originally cheap; if anything
it was priced like a high end phone. That being the case, perhaps they got too
greedy.

When I was at Amazon I asked someone in upper management why they priced the
phone so high, telling them nobody would buy it at that price. They said the
reason was so that people would think it's high end, and not dismiss it as a
low/mid range phone. In the end, I think nobody bought that it was high end.

To be honest it amazes me that people at Amazon drink the koolaid when it does
so little as a company to promote company pride, compared with the other tech
giant in the area, Microsoft.

~~~
blinkingled
>reason was so that people would think it's high end, and not dismiss it as a
low/mid range phone.

Wow, that is whole another level of disconnect with reality!

~~~
rhino369
Making a low/mid range would have been just as bad of an idea. That range is
way lower margin and the established players are way better at it.

They had to go big or go home. They really should have gone home though.

~~~
rifung
The thing is, I think Amazon is fine with selling at low margins. Look at
their Kindle devices.

If anything they don't need to make money from device sales if the phones come
preinstalled with the Amazon market as they can make money off app sales and
get more developer mindshare.

------
tsunamifury
I flew up in First Class on Virgin to Seattle next to a key lead on the fire
phone. We had a nice long talk about the project and what happened. He
vehemently defended the Fire Phone and touted its great and unique aspects
while I examined it and admired the hard work he put in. 3D modeling,
gyroscopic-driven interactions, an universal activity feed -- some interesting
stuff was there...

But there were some serious problems with it like forced promotions where
users would would prefer instead functionality, useless gimmicks, and other
silliness. Without fail everytime I pointed one out, the Lead looked down a
bit bashfully and admitted Bezos had insisted on this nonsense.

Bezos is an blind, egotistical CEO, forcing hardworking engineers to take the
fall for his naive and frankly stupid decisions. His instincts in hardware and
product without fail have been downright pathetic -- and now he will to blame
those who work tirelessly under him for his own failure.

~~~
volaski
Go read the book "Everything store" and come back. You're not the first one
who's been saying stuff like this about him. While reading the book I was
amazed how the entire history of the company is full of doubters saying he's
doing it wrong and the company will fail. Yet time after time the doubters
were proved wrong, and after two decades its growth is only accelerating. Sure
he's not perfect and how the company treats employees is far from ideal, but
he definitely is not a blind pathetic CEO.

~~~
haswell
In the end, this comes down to a question of ends justifying the means.

I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that the company has done very
well in many ways. So has Apple. We've learned that both Jobs and Bezos
weren't/aren't very good people to work for.

Maybe it's naive of me to think this way, but I'd like to think that companies
can be wildly successful without being life sucking and horrible in the
process.

~~~
vijayr
No first hand experience, but I've heard/read this many times that Bezos,
Jobs, Gates, Ellison etc aren't good people to work for. Are there any bosses
of mega corporations that _are_ good to work for?

~~~
hueving
You don't hear about this crap from higher ups at Google. Same for current
Microsoft leadership for that matter.

~~~
serge2k
Page fired all of Google's project managers at one point. There were good
reasons he got moved out of the CEO job for a while.

------
joshmn
Direct link:
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQqQIwAGoVChMIiMuUi5XIxwIVCUOSCh1Siwok&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Famazon-
curtails-development-of-consumer-
devices-1440632203&ei=Am_eVYjCM4mGyQTSlqqgAg&usg=AFQjCNF872MmRCMAaSGdVOXSnHnQjM7ZKA&sig2=Fl_rz0wRHvyZzLtEmDCnaQ)

------
sea2summit
The problem with the Fire Phone isn't the hardware, the hardware is great, the
problem is Fire OS. No one wants a half baked Android fork and a walled
garden. My wife purchased the Fire Phone during their last promotion, and
within 15 minutes she was reflashing to CyanogenMod.

The phone would have been successful if they had simply run stock Android,
preloaded their own bloatware like Samsung does, and perhaps a dedicated
button for Firefly, which is a pretty neat app. The reason the Fire Phone
failed was Bezos is an egotistical asshole who doesn't care what the customer
wants.

~~~
megablast
Wasn't the phone ridiculously expensive with lots of features that nobody
wanted?

Once again, betting on 3d leads to a loss.

~~~
sea2summit
Yes it was premium hardware; I believe it would have been successful as an
Android phone.

My wife actually liked the gimmicky 3D. Go figure.

------
walterbell
_> Still in the works is a high-end computer for the kitchen—code-named
Kabinet—designed to serve as a hub for an Internet-connected home and capable
of taking voice commands for tasks like ordering merchandise from Amazon.com._

Will this be a competitor to the Google router?

~~~
mintplant
> _a high-end computer for the kitchen_

It's Honeywell all over again!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316#Kitchen_Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316#Kitchen_Computer)

~~~
walterbell
The marketing is reminiscent of Amazon's fantasy delivery drone.

 _" the user interface required the user to complete a two-week course just to
learn how to program the device, using only toggle-switch input and binary
light output ... Although a fantasy gift, the Kitchen Computer represented the
first time a computer was offered as a consumer product._"

~~~
pjc50
Note the (not so retro) sexism in the advert: it's targeted at a man buying it
for his wife due to his dissatisfaction with her home economics.

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pkinsky
I can't wait for pallet-loads of fire phones to hit the market at scrap metal
prices.

~~~
dlubarov
No need to wait! Amazon lowered the price to $130 today -
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OC0USA6](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OC0USA6)

It still comes with a year of Prime membership, so if you're a Prime customer
anyway, it's essentially a $31 contract-free phone.

I wonder if it's an aggressive attempt to acquire some users, or if they've
given up on the product and they're just getting rid of inventory?

~~~
spydum
interestingly, I just had one in my cart, and now they are "currently
unavailable".

~~~
riscy
Yea, I then added it to my Wish List and it says $130 and "In Stock August
29th" but adding it to your cart does nothing.

~~~
jedmeyers
I did the same thing but then thought 'what the hell' and clicked 'buy'.
Apparently bought one of the last Fire phones.

------
ericfrederich
Great... if they stop making consumer devices maybe this stupid fork of
Android can go away and they can offer their Amazon Video on ChromeCast and
Nexus Player

------
mrschwabe
Glad the Fire phone has flopped, simply on the basis that it will help reduce
confusion for people looking for a _Firefox_ phone.

~~~
HelloMcFly
Anyone proactively looking for a Firefox phone seems unlikely to also fall
into the camp of people that would be confused by the Amazon Fire phone.

------
Animats
It's not that the Kindle was bad. It's that the e-reader market sector was
absorbed by device integration into more general devices, phones and tablets.

The killer was the growth of "fat phones", which moved into the Kindle's
screen size range.

Oh, right, they also made a phone.

------
bitJericho
I thought the amazon phone was super cool technologically but I have no need
for a phone designed to sell me amazon retail services and products. It'd be
like buying a WalMart brand phone, doesn't make much sense as i want freedom,
not vendor lock in.

------
sgustard
Is Kindle one of the "consumer devices" that's being curtailed? I thought it
was doing well, but if I was thinking of buying one, I'd think twice after
reading this article.

~~~
andrewguenther
The link title is misleading, this is only talking about the Fire Phone

------
anonfunction
Is this true for all products or just phone and tablets? I was actually
intrigued by the echo and dash, even if I think they should be open and not
tied to one company or use.

------
amaks
I might be missing something, but why lay off engineers as opposed to moving
them to other divisions/groups? As a punishment for a screwed up product?

~~~
codeonfire
Management usually thinks engineers are expendable, re-hire-able, and
fungible. They think they will just hire some new ones if a need arises.

------
gojomo
My Amazon Fire TV Stick is quite nice: fairly snappy, very usable interface,
downloadable apps, almost-perfect minimalist remote control. (One flaw: the
'home' button is too easy to hit by mistake.) Better in most respects than the
Google ChromeCast.

I hope Fire TV products survive and thrive through this reorg.

~~~
freyr
Interesting, my interface is extremely laggy and the video stutters. The apps
and remote are nice though.

~~~
gojomo
Mine was pre-ordered, so it's from an early batch. By any chance are you using
an alternate to the bundled AC-USB adapter? (Maybe it's a voltage issue.)

------
pbreit
Should have just made an Amazon-optimized Android phone. Amazon's version of
Android is terrible. Some of the gestures were cute but I think maybe a bit
ambitious. I think there might have been a market for something a bit more
normal.

------
yalogin
I don't get it why would they fire the team? Can they not be absorbed into
other groups? Such a growing company like Amazon definitely needs more people
right?

~~~
pjc50
See all of the "why is Amazon such a terrible employer" articles on HN
recently. They don't care about their people.

------
reality_czech
So the whole team was Fired? Sounds like the guys running it were some real
Bozos.

~~~
nso95
Bezos _

------
ihsw
Paywall.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
[https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Amazon+...](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Amazon+Curtails+Development+of+Consumer+Devices&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

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KamiCrit
This place should be called Amazon News.

~~~
codezero
Why?

~~~
amaks
It should be called "Amazon Bad News"

