After a little more than 4 months into the Amazon Fire experiment, it is safe to say that it has been a major disaster. According to CNET, Amazon has more than $83 million in unsold Fire Phones. Further, the company spent well over $170 million to develop the device:

Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak disclosed on a conference call with investors Thursday that the company took a $170 million charge related to the write-down of costs associated with its smartphone.¹

The device seems solid enough, but several moves stunted the sales of the Fire Phone from the get go. These moves are, perhaps, best described on a Geek.com article:

There were problems right out of the gate as AT&T had trouble moving the phones. The price was quickly lowered to $0.99 on-contract, but it looks like even that hasn’t encouraged consumers to pick up a Fire Phone. The device is currently hovering around 2-stars on the Amazon store page with complaints about the price, AT&T exclusivity, and gimmicky features. The Fire Phone uses an array of IR sensors to adjust the UI based on the position of the user’s head. It’s a somewhat entertaining, but unnecessary feature.²

Also, the device itself, and Amazon’s idea about the device hinders sales. Essentially, the Fire Phone was envisioned as this sort-of buying machine. Amazon sought to make it incredibly easy to find out what something was – a song, movie, or some product – and buy it instantly through the phone. It turns out that this is hardly the sort of feature that consumers are looking for in a handset.