Fire phone is overpriced? Maybe not to be accused of "hunger marketing."

The advent of Amazon Fire Phone became the global scientific community in WWDC and google&http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/37954.html ">nbsp;i/ o The gap between the two developers ' conferences concerns hot spots. In addition to Firefly, Dynamic perspective and other highlight features, around the Fire Phone another widely discussed topic is its price: 199 dollar Contract price, 649 U.S. dollars of bare-metal price, and now the best-selling two smart phones in the market iphone The 5S is the same as the Galaxy S5. Although Fire Phone has 32GB of storage space, but it in the screen, CPU, camera and other key parameters on the overall lag behind the Galaxy S5, not to mention Amazon is the new mobile phone market players, in this field there is no accumulation, so high pricing makes fire It's hard to be attractive enough on the market.

Even more puzzling, Fire's phone pricing is a departure from Amazon's usual low-cost strategy. From the Kindle series to the Kindle Fire series, Amazon's hardware has always been known for its high cost performance, and Bezos has explained that Amazon's business model is to sell quality hardware at close cost: "We want to make money by people's use of our equipment-not people's purchases of our equipment." ”

American analysts have been arguing about why fire phones are priced, some say Amazon is under pressure from operators, some think Amazon wants to make money from hardware, and some say Amazon wants users to understand that their first hardware can have the iphone 5S and Galaxy S5 matching quality.

In contrast, another point seems to be more convincing. Business Insider's editor, Jay Yarow, wrote that Fire phone set such a high price and worked with only one operator, the key reason being that its capacity is currently unable to meet market demand: " Amazon, which has no experience in mass-manufacturing handsets, is unable to start off with a 0-dollar (contract-priced) handset and expects to meet market demand; it must start small (scale) and gradually expand its sales. ”

In fact, the first generation of Kindle Fire in 2011 after the launch of the capacity problem, when Amazon to ensure the smooth delivery, the emergency additional millions of orders. Compared with the tablet, the phone is more complex to manufacture, and Fire Phone in the design of a lot of innovation, Amazon as a new entrants are likely to face manufacturing difficulties. Coincidentally, a year ago there was a rumor that Amazon's smartphone would be postponed because of capacity problems, and it may not be a myth now.

On the other hand, the demand for mobile phones is stronger than that of tablets, and the market for handsets is much larger than that of tablets. Gartner's data showed that global Tablet PCs shipped 190 million units in 2013, while smartphone shipments reached 960 million units. Although the mobile phone market is more competitive, if Amazon continues its low-cost strategy, the market will need to Fire phone more than the Kindle Fire.

If the Fire phone set a lower price, I believe that Fire Phone can be "hot", but Amazon is likely to be unable to deliver goods, a large number of buyers will not be able to get Fire phone in time, and then generate dissatisfaction with Amazon; for the Amazon, which has always been known to put customer service first, This is clearly not what they want to see.

Therefore, if the capacity is indeed limited, and do not want to have a serious shortfall in demand, then can only choose to reduce needs. According to the price theory, to reduce demand, without affecting their own brands, the most direct way to upgrade prices.

In today's mobile phone market, many of the situation is related to the low price of products. Google's Nexus 4, a 299-dollar listing, shook the entire mobile phone industry, but in November 2012 it was sold in a matter of hours and, until the end of January 2013, the shortages were largely resolved; At one point, the manufacturer, LG, blamed each other.

At home, almost all of the "internet phone" has been out of stock situation, many manufacturers have to take the form of "snapping" sales, a large number of people want to buy normal consumers can not buy the phone at the price set by the manufacturer, these products are also referred to as "futures", and manufacturers are considered to be doing "hunger marketing."

In the past, although the mobile phone manufacturers published products will be announced pricing, but because the channel has a greater authority, the manufacturer's pricing is in fact only a guided price, the channel will often be based on demand and supply of mobile phone prices to make certain adjustments to keep the price near the equilibrium.

And for the "internet phone" that restricts sales, if you do not consider other channels into the market part of the product, then the manufacturer pricing is mandatory, if a product pricing is too low, and can not be adjusted according to demand and supply conditions, and capacity upgrading is very limited, then the demand will continue to be higher than the supply, This product will continue to be out of stock.

Obviously for a single product, "price increases" may seriously damage the credibility of manufacturers, so even if the demand, manufacturers rarely choose to take the initiative to upgrade the price of a product. But in the replacement of mobile phones, if the previous generation obviously encountered capacity problems, it might be wise to make a disguised price increase for a new generation of products. Google's Nexus series is a typical example, after Nexus 4 has continued to be out of stock, Nexus 5 did not continue to launch 299 dollars of 8GB, but directly to 349 U.S. dollars to sell 16GB version.

Of course, each manufacturer has its own pricing strategy, how to price the product is the manufacturer's freedom, but if the knowledge at a certain price, capacity can not meet market demand, but still according to the standard pricing, then accused of "hunger marketing" there is nothing to complain about.