In a move to bolster its new Fire phone, Amazon (AMZN) announced Monday that it’s slashed the price of Fire to just $.99, with a two-year contract with AT&T (T). The phone originally came with a $199 price tag at its July 25 release.
The price, according to the company, works out to “$0 down and $18.75 per month (for 24 months) with AT&T,” or about $450 (meaning $450.99 total).
The price drop comes strategically a day ahead of Apple’s (AAPL) mystery event which is expected to see the unveiling of the iPhone 6 and a wearable iWatch.
“Fire is now 99 cents with a two-year contract, plus customers get one full year of Prime included,” said Ian Freed, vice president for Amazon Devices, in a statement. “With access to all of the Prime content, Mayday, 32GB of memory and free unlimited cloud storage for photos, plus the exclusive Dynamic Perspective and Firefly features, Fire is another example of the value Amazon delivers to customers.”
The new pricing plan for the phone still comes with a year of Amazon Prime (at least for a “limited time”) meaning that users save on shipping costs and have access to movies and music through the online retailer’s growing collections of digital offerings.
The bid to grab attention ahead of the new iPhone’s reported release appears to come as an effort to drum up more sales for a phone that’s otherwise received lukewarm reception. In fact, according to Chikita Insights, which tracks phone usage, Fire has just a.02% figure, as reported by Business Insider.
Amazon, however, stated that the phone’s doing just fine based on the number of apps being created since the launch. “The Amazon Appstore has seen tremendous growth with the rate of app submissions to the Appstore more than doubling in the weeks following the Fire phone launch in the U.S. Recent additions,” according to a release.
At the time of the phone’s release, Coins2Day had the opportunity to review the phone, finding a mixed bag of offerings. The phone’s most distinctive features include Dynamic Perspective, allowing the phone to react based on how it’s held, as well as Firefly, which scans objects listed on Amazon to make sales quicker.