You’re Fired: Amazon shelves Fire Phone, dismisses workers

The Amazon Fire Phone has been nothing short of a colossal disappointment. Gadget geeks waited for years for the king of eReaders to release their first phone and when they did? It disappointed heavily. Now the company has fired dozens of engineers who worked on the project and the Amazon Fire Phone’s future looks bleek:

In recent weeks Amazon has dismissed dozens of engineers who worked on its Fire phone at Lab126, its secretive hardware-development center in Silicon Valley, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Fire Phone was dead in the water on announcement, but let’s relive it’s short history:

• It was announced at an overpriced $650
• The Phandroid review generously called it an average experiment
• They only sold about 35,000 units
• Then reduced the price to $200 off-contract
• Honestly, we didn’t think that was a bad deal
• But still admit the phone itself was the biggest fail of the year

And now the phone is no longer. Or until further notice, of which, notice may never come.

The latest rumors regarding the companies dismissal of employees comes from a WSJ article that also claims Amazon is re-organizing their lofty hardware efforts altogether. And if you think about it, Amazon has accrued quite the collection of gadgets since graduating from the original Kindle:

• Amazon Dash
• Amazon Echo
• Amazon Fire TV
• Amazon Fire TV Stick
• Amazon Fire Tablets
• Amazon Fire Phone
• Amazon Kindles

The name of the game seems to be create a wide variety of products at very competitive prices and see if at least one of them can develop a cult following. That may happen for the Amazon Echo which we reviewed and liked. The company is still exploring Drone delivery and rumors suggest a plethora of other projects in the pipeline. Will any of them enjoy massive success?

Interesting note: Amazon’s division for building tech products is called Lab126. The 1 and the 26 stand for the first and last letters of the alphabet. For a company who seems to battle the Big G on more and more frontiers, do you consider Google’s recent name change to Alphabet as a coincidence, playful jab, or perhaps a Skynettish foreshadowing of things to come?