Is it just me or is this hugely unsurprising? When I talk to most people (non-tech), Amazon is not high on people's minds as a place to get phones/plans.
It's not very surprising it's not selling well, but it's a bit surprising that the number is that low. Given how big Amazon's brand is and all the ads I see on TV you'd think they could sucker more people in than that.
I wouldn't expect the 10m numbers that an iPhone pulls in an opening weekend, but they couldn't even break 50k let alone 100k.
The Kindle was a super nice device (to me) and in the days before tablet-ubiquity I'd see them everywhere. I'd never cared for the UX of ebooks until I got one, now I can't stand dead-trees. The Kindle Fire, on the other hand... I wish I'd never ordered the ones my wife and I own. Most expensive paperweights we have.
What is not useful about the Kindle Fire? I have never seen one in the flesh.
Do you still find that you use your original Kindle, the eInk display one I presume?
I am trying to get rid of the books that I have and digitise them or get digital copies if I can. I ought to use one of those book-scanning services to digitise them and make the house empty. I feel bad getting rid of real books given the effort someone has gone through to write them, but they do get recycled I suppose.
Personally, I wouldn't even consider an Amazon "smart" device until it was at least gen 2. From what I understand, hey made big strides between the first and second gen Kindle Fire tablets.
That being said, currently there's no real differentiator for this phone. Maybe they'll eventually do unlimited bandwidth deals for Prime video / music content? (or do they already have that?)
I can definitely agree that the gen 1 kindle fire left a lot to be desired. The latest offerings are quite nice, though.
And, lets be honest, it isn't like the earlier versions of any android device are worth writing home about. Finally moved from a moto droidish era phone up to the moto g. It is truly impressive how far they have come.
I wonder if it is Android itself that has made strides? I have been using it since the G1 and 2.3 felt different to 1.6, but the real change for me came with 4.0 (I had 3 on my Xoom but it felt awkward). I am not sure what whizz-bang features they have been adding in recently, as everything post 4.1 looks different for different's sake to me; more investigation likely required.
Do you think the hardware has got better with the Motorola, or just the software and general less clunkiness?
Our purchase of the first-gen Kindle Fires convinced my wife and myself not to buy any further iterations. There are 9 tablets in our house... guess which two haven't been powered on in the past year.
