Is the Amazon Fire Revolutionary or Just Another Smartphone?

Given its status in e-commerce, when Amazon makes an announcement, it's met by excitement. So when Amazon had a press conference a few weeks ago in Seattle to announce the fact that it was getting into the smartphone market, everyone got really excited. That excitement waned, though, when people started looking at what the Amazon Fire Phone really was – just another smart phone. In a few weeks, the Fire Phone has fallen from number one all of the way down to number 77 on Amazon's Best Seller List.  Here are some reasons why this might be the case: 

Hardware: One of the biggest points Jeff Bezos made about the phone was that it had a longer battery life than other competitive smart phones. This might be true, but battery life isn't as big of a concern for users who have chargers, car chargers, and charging stations to keep their phone alive. Specs and app availability matter so much more, and the display, for example, is lower than iOS's retina display levels. Its 5.5 inch screen is about the same size as some Samsung and Nokia models.

Built-In Mayday Support: 24/7 customer support is certainly a perk, but how many Amazon customers actually use this feature to make it a sellable feature?

3D Effect: This is a gimmick for your home screen and little more. It will be incredibly difficult for mobile app development companies to make apps that are useful and take advantage of this effect. 

It's Not an Android: It will use Base Android, and Google will not port its suite of apps to the Amazon Marketplace. Therefore, Amazon will have to start from scratch on popular apps that use Google Services API. As of this this moment there are over 200,000 apps in the Amazon 

Marketplace, which is nowhere near the number of apps available to Android and iPhone users. 

Price: Everyone thought that Amazon would launch the Fire Phone at a lower price to become an immediate player (think Kindle Fire), but this is not the case. In fact, the Amazon Fire Phone's contract and non-contract prices rival the iPhone 5S and Galaxy S5. 

ATT Exclusivity:  There are far more options out there than when the iPhone debuted on ATT a few years ago. ATT exclusivity of the Fire Phone marginalizes the market and lowers the momentum of a possible greater market share. 

Firefly: Firefly is by the far the most interesting feature of the Fire Phone, but is it really that big of a sell? With it, users can connect directly to a product on Amazon by scanning a barcode or capturing a piece of audio or video. But Amazon already has an app for its marketplace, and it isn't that hard to reach a product page on its mobile browser, so Firefly might just be a luxury that's not necessarily a game-changer. 

While the Fire Phone is a decent phone, there doesn't really seem to be much here to say that Amazon will have Apple, Samsung, and Nexus quaking in their boots with its arrival. Only time will tell how the public will see Amazon's foray into the smart phone market.