To drive sales, e-Commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) updated the features of its smartphone, Fire Phone.
The new features include translation of text to English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Additionally, the Firefly feature has been upgraded which now enables the camera to identify more than 2,000 famous paintings along with movies, books, games, CDs and more which can be purchased later through Amazon.
Another feature – Best Shot – has been added to phone’s camera – allowing it to capture three versions of a snapshot, out of which the best can be chosen. The update will also allow Fire Phone users to block calls from specified numbers and customize ringtones. They can also download ringtones from Amazon Appstore.
Moreover, users can create and edit documents in the pre-loaded WPS Office, a Microsoft Windows alternative.
Amazon Fire Phone, powered with a forked version of Google’s (GOOGL) Android OS, was launched on Jul 25. The device, however, failed to gain popularity and recorded soft sales initially. So the company has been trying to drive the sale of its device. In September, Amazon cut the price of the 32GB Fire smartphone to 99 cents from $199, for a two-year contract with AT&T Inc. (T), while the price of the 64GB edition was lowered to $100 from $300. For Fire Phones off-contract, the price was slashed to $450 for the 32GB models from $650.
To further fuel sales, last month, the company slashed the prices of the unlocked version of its Fire Phone by $250 and offered a free one-year Amazon Prime subscription worth $99 along with the purchase.
The latest move is expected to boost the adoption of the struggling device and help it contest industry leaders in new markets. Despite providing the best Amazon services, the company’s phones have not gained popularity as the app ecosystem is not as developed as other leading platforms. With intensifying competition in the smartphone market, the inclusion of a free Amazon Prime subscription should attract more customers.
Therefore, it could help Amazon expand its current line-up of devices and boost the sales of digital books, music and movies.
Amazon currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Another stock that is performing well at the current level is Stamps.com Inc. (STMP), sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
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