Amazon has reportedly sold less than 35,000 Fire Phones

According to numbers crunched by The Guardian‘s Charles Arthur and based on data from Chitika and comScore, it appears as if the Amazon Fire Phone isn’t exactly setting hardly anything on fire. In fact, if this report is to be believed, Amazon hasn’t sold more than 35,000 total Fire Phone units since the much-hyped unveiling of the device in June. The Fire Phone has been plagued with countless problems since its unveiling, but what makes them worse is that they’re just fundamental mistakes rather than anything really wrong with the device itself. The Fire Phone isn’t a horrible piece of hardware at all. But it’s restricted to one carrier, ships at the flagship-level $200 price, and most of the features that might have given it a chance were really just gimmicks.

Amazon’s Fire Phone was launched in July, after many teaser videos and an expansive unveiling by chief executive Jeff Bezos, who showed off features like its 3D-effect maps and multiple front-facing cameras. But since then, how many Amazon Fire Phones have actually been sold? How many are in use? There were many interesting anomalies in the launch of the Fire Phone. The $200 price tag for a 32GB version on an AT&T contract – the same price range as the iPhone 5S or Samsung GS5 – was a surprise to those who thought that the Kindle and Kindle Fire tablets showed Amazon as a low-end disruptor, selling hardware at cost and profiting on the content. Amazon gave the Fire Phone pride of place on its US web site, and also had a deal to sell through AT&T, the biggest US carrier – though reviews were lukewarm. Amazon famously never gives sales figures for any of the devices it sells, preferring to let its financial results do the talking. Analysts can make estimates of how many devices have been sold, based on their information from sales channels and any guidance the company might give. But it’s not as definitive as, say, the smartphone sales that Apple or BlackBerry include in their financial figures. (They are now the only two companies which give specific values for device sales in their financial results; Apple goes farther by giving the revenue from those sales too.)