亞馬遜Fire手機失敗原因大起底

Two months after Amazon released the Fire phone, it’s fair to call the device a disappointment.

在亞馬遜公司（Amazon）正式推出Fire手機兩個月後，我們有理由把它稱爲一款讓人失望的產品。

Amazon’s customers gave the smartphone a lackluster rating of 2.6 out of 5 stars. Reviewers called the device “forgettable” and “mediocre.” And Amazon AMZN -0.43% all but admitted to underwhelming sales by drastically cutting the Fire’s price from $200 to 99 cents just one month after unveiling the device at a splashy press conference in Seattle.

在滿分爲五星的評價表上，亞馬遜的客戶只給這款智能手機打出了2.6顆星的黯淡評價。評測者則稱其“過目即忘”、“平庸無奇”。當時爲隆重推出這款手機，亞馬遜在西雅圖舉辦了盛大的新聞發佈會。但僅過了一個月，該公司就將Fire手機的定價從200美元大幅削減至99美分，足以表明亞馬遜默認了慘淡的銷售現狀。

Amazon’s stumble with the Fire is a major setback for the online retailing giant. By sinking money and resources into a smartphone, the company had hoped to gain a significant piece of the huge smartphone market long dominated by rivals like Apple AAPL -0.64% , Google GOOG -0.13% and Samsung. Moreover, the Fire was supposed to funnel mobile shoppers to Amazon’s online store by making it easier to find and buy products. But Amazon is now left scrambling, and it’s unclear whether it can recover from its flop.

對這家電商巨頭來說，在Fire手機上栽的這個跟頭是一個重大挫折。該公司起初的如意算盤是，通過投入巨資和豐富資源打造一款智能手機，以期在這個長期被蘋果（Apple）、谷歌（Google）和三星（Samsung）等對手統治的巨大市場上分一杯羹。此外，亞馬遜還希望Fire幫助用戶更便捷地尋找和購買商品，從而將手機購物人羣引入該公司自家的購物平臺上。但現在亞馬遜顯然陣腳大亂，它是否能從這次失敗中東山再起也不得而知。

“The odds of Amazon succeeding were always very small,” says Mark Mahaney, Managing Director and analyst for RBC Capital Markets, who argues the price cut is a veritable Hail Mary pass. “My guess is it’s too late.”

加拿大皇家銀行資本市場公司（RBC Capital Markets）總經理兼分析師馬克o馬哈尼認爲，這種大幅降價純屬孤注一擲。他說：“亞馬遜成功的機會十分渺茫。這種做法爲時已晚。”

The Fire phone’s shortcomings are plenty. On first blush, it’s an adequate device with features comparable to others in the market in terms of screen, camera and memory. What sets it apart is a three-dimensional effect for graphics on certain apps and an application called Firefly that lets shoppers in bricks and mortar stores easily identify over 100 million different products and then buy them online (preferably at Amazon).

Fire手機的缺點多多。乍一看，它似乎是款功能足夠多的手機，在屏幕、攝像頭和內存等方面與市面上的同類產品相差無幾。與衆不同之處在於，某些應用的圖像具有三維顯示效果，還有一款名爲Firefly的應用可以讓實體店的購物者在網上輕鬆找到超過一億種商品並下單（當然最好是在亞馬遜官網上購買）。

But in a crowded space dominated by Apple and Android devices, simply releasing something “adequate” isn’t enough. To stand out, a smartphone like the Fire, which arrived seven years after the first iPhone and six years after the first Android device, requires breaththrough hardware and software.

可是，在這個早已被蘋果和安卓手機擠得滿滿當當的市場裏，僅僅推出一款“功能足夠”的手機是遠遠不夠的。要想脫穎而出，對Fire這樣一款比首款iPhone晚了7年、比首款安卓手機晚了6年才推出的智能手機來說，必須要有突破性的硬件和軟件才行。

“If they had shown up with this phone a long time ago, they could have gotten a lot more attention,” says Frank Gillett, a Forrester analyst. “But it’s a very noisy crowd in an established market. Once you show up at the party now, nobody pays attention.”

弗雷斯特研究公司（Forrester）分析師弗蘭克o吉列特表示：“如果這款產品是很早以前推出的，那肯定能吸引很多人的眼球。但現在這個市場早已人滿爲患、衆聲喧譁了。這時候你再出現，根本沒人會在意你。”

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment. But at the Fire phone’s unveiling, Jeff Bezos trumpeted the device as a superior smartphone.

亞馬遜的一位發言人拒絕發表評論。但在Fire手機的發佈會上，傑夫o貝索斯卻把自家這款產品吹捧爲超級智能手機。

“Can we make a better phone for Amazon Prime customers?” he said onstage. “Yes. Yes, we can.”

當時他在舞臺上是這麼說的：“我們能爲亞馬遜的尊享客戶打造一款更好的手機嗎？沒錯的，我們可以。”

Robert Brunner, who served as Apple’s director of industrial design from 1989 to 1997 and later collaborated on the design of Amazon’s first Kindle e-reader, gave a much more pessimistic assessment.

羅伯特o布倫納曾在1989年到1997年間擔任蘋果公司工業設計總監，後來也爲亞馬遜首款電子閱讀器Kindle的設計出過一份力。他對Fire手機的前景卻要悲觀得多。

“To be totally frank, the Amazon phone has zero cache,” he says. “The design itself is very, overtly neutral.”

他說：“說實話，亞馬遜這款手機實在乏善可陳，它的設計本身就太平庸了。”

A phone is a personal object and conscious design choice on the part of its owner, Brunner argues. Alongside the iPhone and Android devices like the Moto X, customizable down to the color of its side trim, the Fire phone is nondescript. He went so far as to toss out the ultimate techie insult.

布倫納認爲，手機是一種私人物品，人們在挑選手機時會對設計格外在意。與iPhone和Moto X這種連邊框側顏色都可以定製的安卓手機相比，Fire手機毫無特色可言。他最後拋出了一句從技術角度來說堪稱登峯造極的鄙薄之語。

“I actually put the Fire down below BlackBerry right now as an object of desire,” Brunner says.

他說：“就激發購買慾而言，我現在把Fire擺在黑莓（BlackBerry）之後。”

It also didn’t help that Amazon’s phone was the most brazen attempt yet by any major smartphone maker to lock its users into its own ecosystem of products. Certainly, the iPhone has long since steered users towards Apple services — and likewise Android users to Google offerings — but Amazon went one step further by adding what amounts to a “Buy” button on the side of the Fire phone. Click it, and you’re several steps away from two-day delivery.

另一個幫不上忙的情況是，不少主流智能手機制造商都希望把用戶鎖在自家產品生態圈之內，但這款手機堪稱有史以來最肆無忌憚的嘗試。的確，iPhone一直引導用戶使用蘋果的各種服務——安卓也會讓用戶使用谷歌的各種產品——但亞馬遜卻更進一步，乾脆在Fire手機上裝了個相當於“購買”的按鍵。按下這個鍵，只需幾步就能享用兩日送達的快遞服務了。

“I personally felt the ‘Buy’ button was a bit forced,” says Yves Behar, the award-winning Swiss industrial designer whose past and present clients include Samsung, Jawbone and Herman Miller. “There were more elegant ways to go about introducing that.”

伊夫o比哈爾是一位曾獲得大獎的瑞士工業設計師，他的客戶包括三星公司、Jawbone公司和赫曼米勒公司（Herman Miller）。他說：“我覺得‘購買’按鍵有點強迫性。要加入這個功能，其實還有許多更加優雅的好辦法。”

Amazon also misfired on how it sells the phone. Android devices and iPhones are on the shelves at thousands of physical retailers and all four top U.S. cell carriers. But people can buy the Fire phone at far fewer channels. If you want the phone, your only options are , a few brick and mortar retailers like Best Buy BBY 2.16% , and AT&T T -0.14% , the phone’s exclusive cell carrier.

而在這款手機的銷售方式上，亞馬遜同樣暈招頻出。你在美國的上千家實體零售店和四大移動運營商處都能看到安卓手機和iPhone。但要買Fire手機卻只有少得可憐的幾個渠道。如果你想買它，就只能去亞馬遜官網、百思買（Best Buy）等少數幾家實體零售店，以及它的獨家移動運營商美國電話電報公司（AT&T）。

Additionally, Amazon stumbled on pricing. Selling the Fire for $200, the industry standard, ran contrary to Amazon’s long-held, company-wide strategy of undercutting the competition.

此外，亞馬遜的定價也頗爲失敗。Fire的定價是200美元，這算是業內標準售價，卻跟亞馬遜公司長期堅持的低價戰略背道而馳。

As it stands, Mahaney, the RBC analyst, doesn’t expect the Fire phone’s U.S. smartphone market share to crack 10%, even after the price drop. Indeed, price drops on phones rarely lift sales. For example, AT&T’s price cut last year on the HTC First, a phone with Facebook-centric software, didn’t save it from eventually being killed off.

就現狀而言，馬哈尼認爲，Fire手機就算降價甩賣，在美國智能手機市場的份額也很難突破10%。實際上，手機降價很難提升銷量。比如，美國電話電報公司去年對HTC First（配有以Facebook爲中心的軟件系統）的降價促銷就沒能挽救它最終沒落的命運。

But Amazon may have a shot next year if it comes up with a newer model with a more competitive design and wider availability. Its first Kindle Fire tablet in 2011 was by no means a home run, but the versions that followed proved substantially better, even if Amazon’s share of the worldwide tablet market remains a miniscule .4%, according to IDC.

但是，如果亞馬遜明年能推出設計更具競爭力、銷售渠道也更廣的新機型，它可能還有反戈一擊的機會。它在2011年推出的首款Kindle Fire平板電腦根本不怎麼樣，但後續升級版則有了顯著提升，儘管國際數據公司(IDC)表示，亞馬遜在全球平板電腦市場的份額僅有微不足道的0.4%。

“This probably isn’t the last Fire phone we’ll see,” says Gillett, from Forrester. “But if Amazon has learned anything, the announcement of the next one will be more low-key.”

吉列特表示：“這可能並不是我們能看到的最後一款Fire手機。但如果亞馬遜已經汲取了教訓，那麼推出下一款手機時，該公司想必會變得更加低調一些。”