The Fire Phone is costing Amazon $170 million in write-down costs

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 24 Oct 2014

Amazon Fire Phone first ad

It is no secret that Amazon’s Fire Phone has been a failure. But how exactly big? Well, the failure of Fire Phone has forced Amazon to write down $170 million in charges because of the unsold stock and other commitments to its supplier. 

The company had a baffling $83 million worth of Fire Phone in its inventory at the end of third quarter. All this affected the company’s balance sheet negatively as it posted a loss of $544 million in the previous quarter — the biggest loss in its history. To make matters worse, the company expects another $500m+ loss in the last quarter of 2014.

On the bright side, Amazon did state that the Fire TV has been the “best-selling streaming box on Amazon” in the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

It was rumored that Amazon is looking to enter the smartphone market since the last few years. This year it finally entered the market with the Fire Phone, which it announced in July this year. The handset packed some unique features like  a 3D interface called ‘Dynamic Perspective,’ FireFly and more. Sadly, the handset was nothing more than a glorified barcode scanner for Amazon products and all its gimmicky features. The exclusive partnership with AT&T did not help the handset either.

[Via Cnet]