Even though Amazon’s Fire phone hasn’t caught the imagination of consumers, it looks like Amazon is still planning another crack at the smartphone market.
Jorrit Van der Meulen, the head of Amazon’s device division in Europe, told The Guardian in an interview that the company is “undeterred” by the Fire’s poor consumer reception, and is taking feedback from the device’s introduction under consideration for future forays into the same space.
“We certainly read everything that’s written from customers to journalists and take note, so might the second step be slightly different than our first step, sure. I suspect that it will be,” he said.
While he didn’t say anything concrete in the interview, it seems like Amazon is planning a sequel to the Fire. Van der Meulen said that this isn’t the first time Amazon received bad reviews for a new device, citing the introduction of the original Kindle as an example. Consumers and journalists may have written off this first incarnation of Amazon’s smartphone, but the company is clearly taking a long view of its future in the phone market.
Van der Muelen’s comments are a part of what’s shaping up to be an apology press tour by the company’s executives after it revealed the Fire phone was a flop last month. Amazon exec David Limp said that the company botched the pricing for the device, which initially retailed for $199 on a two-year contract before Amazon dropped its price to 99 cents. The company took a $170 million write-down on the Fire phone last quarter.
