Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announces the Fire smartphone.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announces the Fire smartphone.

Amazon’s Fire Phone is getting another price cut.

firephone-unlockedThe device, unveiled in July and suffering from lackluster sales in recent months, is being reduced in price to $199 unlocked. That’s down from $649 unlocked when the Fire Phone debuted, and followed a price cut to $449 in September.

Amazon started selling the Fire Phone for 99 cents in September, with a two-year contract on AT&T.

The device, with a 4.7-inch HD display, also comes with a full year of Amazon Prime, a $99 value.

Amazon announced a $170 million charge in write-down costs last quarter “primarily related to Fire Phone inventory valuation and supplier commitment costs.”

In other words, the Fire Phone — at least so far — is a flop.

We dug into the Fire Phone’s lackluster debut, when GeekWire reporter Tricia Duryee asked whether Amazon could recover from the disastrous launch.

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos — known for his long-term thinking — has said that he’ll judge the success of the Fire Phone five years from now.

UPDATE: Amazon says that the $199 deal is only available through Cyber Monday, and that the device comes with new features. The company noted via email:

The unlocked, no contract Fire includes additional features, such as Firefly text translation – the ability to “Firefly” foreign language to have it translated in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish; Firefly wine label recognition powered by Vivino; Best Shot in camera mode that allows you to choose the best image out of three options; secure corporate VPN using native IPSec/L2TP VPN client; plus hundreds of other user interface and performance improvements. These additional features will begin rolling out to existing Fire customers via a free, over the air software update in the coming weeks.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.