John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Consumers More Interested in Make-Believe Amazon Phone Than Fabled Facebook Phone

If Facebook or Amazon were to release a smartphone of their own, would anyone buy it?

Impossible to say for certain when neither device exists — yet. But a new assessment of current consumer sentiment toward a smartphone from either company suggests that Amazon would have a far easier time selling one than Facebook.

According to Baird Equity Research’s latest U.S. consumer smartphone survey, the debut of an Amazon or Facebook smartphone would likely be met with middling curiosity.

Of the 875 consumers Baird queried, 42 percent said they are either “interested” or “very interested” in an Amazon smartphone, while 29 percent volunteered that they were either “not interested” or “probably not interested.” About 30 percent said they weren’t sure.

So, lukewarm interest in the Amazon phone — at best.

The rumored Facebook phone fared quite a bit worse. Only 12 percent of respondents said that they would be “interested” or “very interested” in a smartphone from the social networking company. The majority of them — 73 percent — said that they would likely either be “not interested or “probably not interested.”

With hundreds of million users, both companies have vast potential markets for their own branded smartphone. Too bad those users don’t find the idea of a smartphone from either company all that compelling.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work