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Two months after Amazon released the Fire phone, it’s fair to call the device a disappointment.
在亚马逊公司（Amazon）正式推出Fire手机两个月后，我们有理由把它称为一款让人失望的产品。
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.
在满分为五星的评价表上，亚马逊的客户只给这款智能手机打出了2.6颗星的黯淡评价。评测者则称其“过目即忘”、“平庸无奇”。当时为隆重推出这款手机，亚马逊在西雅图举办了盛大的新闻发布会。但仅过了一个月，该公司就将Fire手机的定价从200美元大幅削减至99美分，足以表明亚马逊默认了惨淡的销售现状。
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.
对这家电商巨头来说，在Fire手机上栽的这个跟头是一个重大挫折。该公司起初的如意算盘是，通过投入巨资和丰富资源打造一款智能手机，以期在这个长期被苹果（Apple）、谷歌（Google）和三星（Samsung）等对手统治的巨大市场上分一杯羹。此外，亚马逊还希望Fire帮助用户更便捷地寻找和购买商品，从而将手机购物人群引入该公司自家的购物平台上。但现在亚马逊显然阵脚大乱，它是否能从这次失败中东山再起也不得而知。
“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.”
加拿大皇家银行资本市场公司（RBC Capital Markets）总经理兼分析师马克o马哈尼认为，这种大幅降价纯属孤注一掷。他说：“亚马逊成功的机会十分渺茫。这种做法为时已晚。”
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手机的缺点多多。乍一看，它似乎是款功能足够多的手机，在屏幕、摄像头和内存等方面与市面上的同类产品相差无几。与众不同之处在于，某些应用的图像具有三维显示效果，还有一款名为Firefly的应用可以让实体店的购物者在网上轻松找到超过一亿种商品并下单（当然最好是在亚马逊官网上购买）。
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，在这个早已被苹果和安卓手机挤得满满当当的市场里，仅仅推出一款“功能足够”的手机是远远不够的。要想脱颖而出，对Fire这样一款比首款iPhone晚了7年、比首款安卓手机晚了6年才推出的智能手机来说，必须要有突破性的硬件和软件才行。
“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）分析师弗兰克o吉列特表示：“如果这款产品是很早以前推出的，那肯定能吸引很多人的眼球。但现在这个市场早已人满为患、众声喧哗了。这时候你再出现，根本没人会在意你。”
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment. But at the Fire phone’s unveiling, Jeff Bezos trumpeted the device as a superior smartphone.
亚马逊的一位发言人拒绝发表评论。但在Fire手机的发布会上，杰夫o贝索斯却把自家这款产品吹捧为超级智能手机。
“Can we make a better phone for Amazon Prime customers?” he said onstage. “Yes. Yes, we can.”
当时他在舞台上是这么说的：“我们能为亚马逊的尊享客户打造一款更好的手机吗？没错的，我们可以。”
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.
罗伯特o布伦纳曾在1989年到1997年间担任苹果公司工业设计总监，后来也为亚马逊首款电子阅读器Kindle的设计出过一份力。他对Fire手机的前景却要悲观得多。
“To be totally frank, the Amazon phone has zero cache,” he says. “The design itself is very, overtly neutral.”
他说：“说实话，亚马逊这款手机实在乏善可陈，它的设计本身就太平庸了。”
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.
布伦纳认为，手机是一种私人物品，人们在挑选手机时会对设计格外在意。与iPhone和Moto X这种连边框侧颜色都可以定制的安卓手机相比，Fire手机毫无特色可言。他最后抛出了一句从技术角度来说堪称登峰造极的鄙薄之语。
“I actually put the Fire down below BlackBerry right now as an object of desire,” Brunner says.
他说：“就激发购买欲而言，我现在把Fire摆在黑莓（BlackBerry）之后。”
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.
另一个帮不上忙的情况是，不少主流智能手机制造商都希望把用户锁在自家产品生态圈之内，但这款手机堪称有史以来最肆无忌惮的尝试。的确，iPhone一直引导用户使用苹果的各种服务——安卓也会让用户使用谷歌的各种产品——但亚马逊却更进一步，干脆在Fire手机上装了个相当于“购买”的按键。按下这个键，只需几步就能享用两日送达的快递服务了。
“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比哈尔是一位曾获得大奖的瑞士工业设计师，他的客户包括三星公司、Jawbone公司和赫曼米勒公司（Herman Miller）。他说：“我觉得‘购买’按键有点强迫性。要加入这个功能，其实还有许多更加优雅的好办法。”
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 Amazon.com, a few brick and mortar retailers like Best Buy BBY 2.16% , and AT&T T -0.14% , the phone’s exclusive cell carrier.
而在这款手机的销售方式上，亚马逊同样晕招频出。你在美国的上千家实体零售店和四大移动运营商处都能看到安卓手机和iPhone。但要买Fire手机却只有少得可怜的几个渠道。如果你想买它，就只能去亚马逊官网、百思买（Best Buy）等少数几家实体零售店，以及它的独家移动运营商美国电话电报公司（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，亚马逊的定价也颇为失败。Fire的定价是200美元，这算是业内标准售价，却跟亚马逊公司长期坚持的低价战略背道而驰。
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.
就现状而言，马哈尼认为，Fire手机就算降价甩卖，在美国智能手机市场的份额也很难突破10%。实际上，手机降价很难提升销量。比如，美国电话电报公司去年对HTC First（配有以Facebook为中心的软件系统）的降价促销就没能挽救它最终没落的命运。
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，如果亚马逊明年能推出设计更具竞争力、销售渠道也更广的新机型，它可能还有反戈一击的机会。它在2011年推出的首款Kindle Fire平板电脑根本不怎么样，但后续升级版则有了显著提升，尽管国际数据公司(IDC)表示，亚马逊在全球平板电脑市场的份额仅有微不足道的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：“这可能并不是我们能看到的最后一款Fire手机。但如果亚马逊已经汲取了教训，那么推出下一款手机时，该公司想必会变得更加低调一些。”
