Amazon seems to have truly become the Walmart of e-commerce, and I'm not just talking about what the company does (commerce), but rather what the brand represents.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Walmart and Amazon have proven that if you dominate the supply chain landscape and offer a huge variety with low margins, you can do moderately well (i.e. stay in business). But with so much being essentially commodity goods and services (physical and digital), you really can't expect higher margins. So Amazon lives on, even after 20 years in the business.
But with that much history and branding (intentional and unintentional), you really can't expect to create demand for your own premium products - competing with companies that have spent the same amount of time (decades) marketing themselves as design-driven, high quality, premium brands.
It appears that Amazon expects to pull a complete 180 with their brand overnight, as if a product itself (if it's "cool enough") can negate and rise above 20 years of commodity reseller branding.
Sounds a bit like the lone hacker who expects their next mobile app to explode with popularity just because it exists and might have a small edge on the competition. Except in this case, Fire Phone didn't even have an edge. Still, I'm convinced that even if it had been better than the iPhone (or whichever best Android phone) in almost every way, it still would have been doomed for failure.
No one brags about getting the Walmart version of something. The same could be said for Amazon.
I do respect the company's efforts to take "bold" risks. I also really want Amazon to succeed - I'm a very happy Prime and AWS customer, and I think their hardware is actually pretty good. I just wonder if the big bets would be better placed on products and services that better align with the brand they've created already.
Personally I don't think they are trying to become the next big hardware manufacturer. I think they are making the Fire devices to drive consumption of Amazon services, similar to how Google made Android to drive usage of Google services (and made Nexus devices to drive Android).
Which means they don't need to be a huge hit in the device market, and they don't even necessarily need the device division to be profitable.
The biggest clue to me is the Kindle e-reader. It seems obvious they created the Kindle to drive Amazon book sales. Doubly so with the incredibly aggressive price reduction generation-over-generation.
The problem for amazon that strong competition is appearing. Walmart is starting to take ecommerce seriously. And growth is declining(maybe they are related ?) .
And i don't think this is exactly overnight. Prime, and amazon's customer service are good examples of amazon trying to build a "love" brand.
To some extent it could be a desperate move by bezos - because what if in the future people will prefer to do their ecommerce via phones ?
Or any other of the popular value brands like Ikea, Target, Old Navy, Southwest, H&M or Honda. Amazon is perceived as utilitarian, but that's not inevitable for a value retailer.
There's a fundamental mismatch. Jeff Bezos wants to be perceived as cool, cutting edge, an explorer, an innovator. These are elitist concepts that work for a premium, aspirational brand. Value brands need to come across as ordinary people.
I love Amazon to death. I have no idea what you mean by "Amazon version of something", but I just purchased an MS ergo keyboard from them a few weeks ago instead of going to best buy.
As far as I'm concerned there is no "Amazon version of something", there's simply an amazing service providing so much value that I'm more than happy to wait a few days to get it from Amazon than to buy it retail.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Walmart and Amazon have proven that if you dominate the supply chain landscape and offer a huge variety with low margins, you can do moderately well (i.e. stay in business). But with so much being essentially commodity goods and services (physical and digital), you really can't expect higher margins. So Amazon lives on, even after 20 years in the business.
But with that much history and branding (intentional and unintentional), you really can't expect to create demand for your own premium products - competing with companies that have spent the same amount of time (decades) marketing themselves as design-driven, high quality, premium brands.
It appears that Amazon expects to pull a complete 180 with their brand overnight, as if a product itself (if it's "cool enough") can negate and rise above 20 years of commodity reseller branding.
Sounds a bit like the lone hacker who expects their next mobile app to explode with popularity just because it exists and might have a small edge on the competition. Except in this case, Fire Phone didn't even have an edge. Still, I'm convinced that even if it had been better than the iPhone (or whichever best Android phone) in almost every way, it still would have been doomed for failure.
No one brags about getting the Walmart version of something. The same could be said for Amazon.
I do respect the company's efforts to take "bold" risks. I also really want Amazon to succeed - I'm a very happy Prime and AWS customer, and I think their hardware is actually pretty good. I just wonder if the big bets would be better placed on products and services that better align with the brand they've created already.