Amazon appears to be calling “Mayday” only weeks after releasing the Fire phone, slashing the price from $199 to $.99 but still giving away a free year of Amazon Prime service.
It hasn’t even been two months since Amazon released its not-quite-3D Fire phone and it’s already slashed the price on the device like it’s a 3-year-old feature phone, announcing this morning that the Fire can be had for $.99 to customers willing to sign a two-year contract with AT&T.
The 32GB version of the Fire originally sold for $199 when it released on July 25 as an AT&T exclusive. That price also included a year of Amazon Prime service, giving users access to the e-tailer’s library of streaming video and music, along with two-day shipping at no extra cost for a lot of items sold on the site.
The good news for those who might want to try the Fire is that the $.99 price still includes the free year of Prime. So you’re basically getting $99 worth of Prime for the cost of your monthly wireless bill.
Since Amazon doesn’t release hardware sales figures, it’s impossible to say how few or many units the Fire has moved in its short time on the market. It feels safe to say that the “Dynamic Perspective” 3D effect that the company hyped so much in pre-release wasn’t the instant game-changer it hoped it would be.
The price cut is obviously an effort to get as many of the devices into consumers’ hands as possible, hoping to make up for the lost money in sales of apps, videos, e-books, and Amazon merchandise. The company has historically kept prices low on its hardware, like Kindle e-readers and Fire tablets, but it’s never just given a relatively new product away.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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