Failures have made Amazon stronger

It is believed that failures have made Amazon stronger. Amazon is a popular and well reputed company in the world. Recently, Amazon has been planning an expansion into more and more product categories which has been a fail move so far when compared with the expectations of either the consumers, marketers, or the company. Moreover, the boss of the company also believes that he has made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon. Amazon CEO admits that failures have cost the company dear but experimentation like the Fire Phone is the key to survival.

According to Jeff Bezos, he says “I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at AMZN Literally. None of those things are fun, but they also don’t matter. What really matters is that companies that don’t continue to experiment – companies that don’t embrace failure – they eventually get into a desperate position, where the only thing they can do is make a ‘Hail Mary’ bet at thevery end of their corporate existence. I don’t believe in bet-the-company bets.”

He believes that such failures have made the company stronger and shaped it better. According to him, embracing failures was an important part of surviving and thriving as a modern business. The company said that it has no regrets over the past failures. When you are going to take bold steps and experiment new things in order to bring innovations, no one is sure about the future the product might have. And if they are experiments you do not know ahead of time if they are going to work. Experiments are by their very nature prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that did not work.

If you talk about failures by Amazon, Fire Phone is one of them as the company had to write off about $170 million worth of unsold Fire Phones.

Amazon’s Fire Phone was a sales disaster

Amazon is the benchmark for retail corporations. The company has been the best out there and has dominated the market for many years now. When compared to its peers and competitors, Amazon is way ahead of them as it provides best quality products in comparatively lower prices. The retail stores such as Wal-Mart, EBay, and Target etc. have been chasing and trying to match the prices with the largest retailer in the United States. The company expanded its business into more product categories, but it failed to make its mark in the phones market.

To be very honest, Amazon’s Fire Phones were an absolute sales disaster. The company entered the market of smartphones a little too late where Apple introduced its 6^th series of iPhones and Samsung Galaxy Phones introduced its 5^th version. Moreover, Amazon took a bold step to price tag its Fire Phone at just $199. Financial Post reported that “The Seattle-based technology company cut the price of its Fire Phone to just US$199 unlocked, a vast reduction from the US$649 price tag it originally carried during the device’s much-hyped launch in June.”

According to a tech savvy Carmi Levy based in London said “It’s no secret that the Amazon Fire Phone has been an absolute sales disaster in the U.S. And the reason being is that it didn’t offer a compelling enough reason to smartphone owners to switch from the phones they currently has and are satisfied with.”

The phone did not make an impact in the market because of many reasons. First of all, the phone was extremely overpriced considering the company being a new entrant in such a competitive market where Apple and Samsung have been dominant for almost a decade. Moreover, when compared to Apple’s latest products as well as Samsung Galaxy phones, Amazon Fire Phone is bulky and heavy. The Amazon Phone is the heaviest and thickest of all the smartphones in its price range. The phone has lack of differentiation as well as fewer applications.

In a nutshell, in terms of performance, prices, and anything else, Amazon Fire Phones became sales disaster as soon as they were launched in the market.

Amazon UK has its best Black Friday ever

Amazon is the largest retailing stores and it is one of the largest retail store chain operators in the country and the world respectively. Amazon knows how to keep its customers content with providing the best quality products at cheaper prices when compared to its peers and competitors such as Wal-Mart, EBay etc. Prior to the massive shopping holiday season that is Black Friday and Thanksgiving, Amazon starts its massive holiday sales a week before Black Friday. Hence, the online super retailer is sliding ahead of the competition when compared to EBay and Wal-Mart.

On record, Amazon UK had its busiest day following Black Friday holiday sales festival. The company said “Black Friday was the busiest day on record for online retailer Amazon UK, with sales that surpassed all expectations.” The website of the company recorded orders for more than 5.5 million goods. Hence it is believed that the company sold around 64 items per second. The company believes that the appetite for public at Black Friday was bigger than ever and it was the busiest day to date for the company. Last year's Black Friday was also a record day for Amazon when it sold more than 4 million items.

Xavier Garambois is the vice president of EU retail at Amazon who believed that “Ever since we introduced Black Friday to the UK in 2010, sales have increased year-on-year but this year really has surpassed all of our expectations. The public's appetite for Black Friday has been bigger than ever, kicking off the Christmas shopping period in earnest and establishing Black Friday as a fixture on the UK Christmas shopping calendar.”

Whatsoever, this has gone as the best business day in the history of the company. Selling 64 items per second is exceptional and the company believes that it will keep up the good work following Cyber Monday and the normal business days as well.

How far will Amazon go with its ad-supported video?

Amazon is the benchmark for retail corporations. The company has been the best out there and has dominated the market for many years now. When compared to its peers and competitors, Amazon is way ahead of them as it provides best quality products in comparatively lower prices. Hence, when compared to its competitors, Amazon has planned to give free streaming service to its Amazon Prime members whereas Netflix will be charging around $8.99 for one month plan. Hence, this will leave the Netflix viewers in some confusion whether to stick with Netflix or switch to Amazon Prime.

Amazon already has a video streaming service under its Prime banner which is giving tough competition to Netflix and Hulu. But the company has planned something else to give itself a competitive edge over others. According to New York Post, “Amazon boss Jeff Bezos is primed and ready for a fresh assault on the streaming-video space. The e-commerce giant will roll out a new ad-supported streaming offering early next year that will be separate from its $99-a-year Prime membership, which includes a video service.” Hence as Guardian reported that this new service will give tough competition to Netflix and Hulu once it is launched.

The best part about this new streaming service is that it will be free of cost for viewers in order to lure them towards Amazon Prime membership. This new service sounds like it is TV and possibly films, rather than a short form competitor to YouTube of the kind that Yahoo is rumored to be launching soon. As Amazon has not yet disclosed anything about the number of memberships it’s Amazon Prime has, it is believed that there are more than 25 million people subscribed and watching Prime.

Hence in a nutshell, the main question arises whether this service will be a hit for Amazon giving the company a competitive edge over its peers and competitors.

Wal-Mart failed again while competing against Amazon

Prior to Black Friday, Thanksgiving, and New Year, companies like Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target, and Best Buy etc. are pumped up. As Amazon is the benchmark for all the other companies in the retail store market as well as technology market with the launch of Amazon Echo, peers and competitors try hard to match Amazon in terms of product quality as well as prices. Hence, Wal-Mart recently announced to match Amazon’s price list prior to Black Friday both in-store prices and online store prices.

As far as low prices are concerned, for its Black Friday deals, Amazon cut off the prices of Play Station 4 consoles to as low as just $89.99. The console is currently price tagged at $399.99 everywhere. Wal-Mart probably thought it was making a smart marketing move with its Wal-Mart Ad Match Guarantee, a policy where the retailer offers its products at the same price as its competitors. However, this did not mean that the ingenuity of the Internet to take advantage of its tax rule, which only requires the customer to show a copy of the ad that lists the low price regardless of retailer.

Because of this, people were able to get Play Station 4 at a very cheap price, all thanks to Amazon. Because of the price list matching as Wal-Mart decided, many people made the most out of this opportunity and bought PS4s for as low as $89.99. Amazon hoax coupled with Wal-Mart’s price matching leads to ridiculously cheap PS4s. Fake listing tricks retailer into selling underpriced consoles.

Amazon is the dominant force in cloud computing

Recently, Amazon surpassed other top companies when it upgraded its cloud computer services and solutions. Google Inc. and Amazon are two of the biggest Information Technology companies in the market. Both of these companies have developed huge networks within their companies in order to keep their businesses going. Recently, Google fell behind Amazon as the fastest growing business. Google Inc. has built one of the most powerful cloud networks of data centers in the world which could manage over more than three billion search queries every single day. Hence, the company’s ambitions were to move forward as the one of the fasting growing businesses. However, now the company is trying to catch Amazon as it fell behind in the fast-growing business of renting out computing horsepower to others.

AMZN is best known for selling almost everything from books to movies and clothes and electronics as well as power tools. Nytimes.com reported that “Amazon Web Services already provides so-called cloud computing services at low prices for customers including the Central Intelligence Agency and Netflix. Amazon is trying to get more tech dollars from business customers by also offering services and processes that make it a competitor to traditional suppliers of business technology like Oracle.”

A senior analyst at Gartner, Lydia Leong gave her expertise views on advanced technology and cloud computing. She said “Two years ago, public clouds were maybe 2 percent of all computing workloads. Now they are more than 10 percent. By 2018, it will be more than 50 percent.”

Google’s Director of cloud business for corporations gave his views as to why companies now prefer cloud computing and services over anything. “The cloud is cheaper, but that is not really what is driving companies into it. They want to be more experimental, faster, data driven. This is part of a larger change inside companies.”