An Amazon exec has likened the Fire Phone’s failure to the first Kindle

For all intents and purposes Amazon’s Fire Phone is a flop. Or at least it is in the US where it has only sold 35,000 handsets since June. Amazon is apparently undeterred by this, and one exec has even likened it to the first Kindle that was released back in 2007.

Speaking to the Guardian, Jorrit Van der Meulen, Amazon’s European vice president of devices, claims that the company has learnt a lot for the future and is undeterred by poor reviews and sales of the Fire Phone. In fact, he did make direct comparisons to the first generation Kindle, saying:

If you look at version one of the Kindle e-reader it was pretty bad, like the reviews we received on it. But we said we’re going to keep going, keep investing and do this eventually, receiving many lumps along the way.”

The real difference, of course, being that the Kindle was launched into the fledgling e-reader market, whereas the Fire Phone has to compete with established smartphone manufacturers like Apple, HTC, Samsung, and Google.

But despite reports that indicate Amazon has written off $170 million (£106 million) worth of Fire Phones, it definitely appears that we haven’t seen the last of an Amazon brand smartphone. I do wonder what the Fire Phone 2 has in store.