I logged into the web version of Amazon yesterday and was greeted by this take over screen:
It’s the promo for the UK version of the Amazon Fire Phone, exclusively available on O2.
If you choose the lowest £13/month tariff (24-months) on the always helpful O2 Refresh plan, then the Fire Phone will cost £399. Or you can pick up the device free on a £33/month price plan.
I’m tempted, just to get a proper long-term look.
I think Amazon has got quite a bit of work to do before folk will be lining up around the block for it.
How about you? Interested now that it’s coming to the UK?
I’ve been rewatching the Madmen TV show recently and this morning I saw a newspaper ad for Amazon’s new fire phone. There’s no way Don Draper would’ve been impressed by this incredibly dull ad with the tag line “Meet the only smartphone with Firefly technology”….That’s it. No description of what Firefly is and why consumers should be interested. No meaning. Nothing. As if that’s what consumers need in their already overly complex lifes more technology without any meaning or purpose. I assume the marcomms dept at O2 have very low expectations for the phone & paid peanuts for the ad copy
Another thing about O2 ads that bugs me is why do they insist on including the Telefonica bran on the ad. It’s just confusing and no normal person is even remotely interested in the name of the Spanish parent
I hope Amazon will learn from this failure and stop trying to be a player in devices and focus on making their consumer retail/services excel across all platforms
Given its uniformity I wonder if the copy is actually Amazon’s, not O2’s. Either way, when I saw similar images on Twitter and Facebook I thought exactly the same thing… there was nothing other than the word ‘Amazon’ that generated any interest or gave a clue as to why you’d want to own the device.
As Benedict Evans has been commenting https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/509184160225718272 it’s likely that what we’re actually seeing was not their initial aspiration in terms of a disruptive / innovative offering.