A Time To Tear Down: Goodbye Amazon Fire Phone And Microsoft Zune Music

According to a weathered proverb, “There’s a time for everything under the sun. A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build.” For these two products, apparently, it’s a time to “kill” or “tear down” the projects, in honor of streamlining and making room for better things.

Goodbye, Fire Phone.

Fans of Jeff Bezos and everything Amazon may be disheartened to know that Amazon has stopped selling the products. The promotional media was very snazzy, however, the product itself was underwhelming. And faced with competition from a sea of Androids, who wants half an Android?

Android users seem to prefer standard Android, or even stripped-down Androids, but the Fire Phone runs Fire OS, which is Linux-based. Later, Amazon rolled out updates to the Fire OS, which is said to be built on Android 4.4.3.

In spite of the updates, the market still didn’t quite snap up the phones. So now, the last stocks have been slashed to $119 on Amazon, bundled with a full year’s FREE subscription of Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime gives the user free shipping, as well as unlimited access to downloadable content. The Amazon Fire Phone is also available on eBay for $130.

Sadly, the snipping off of the Fire Phone also caused a retrenchment of the engineers from Amazon’s Lab126, one of their hardware divisions. News has also broken out that Amazon is working on Kindle Fire tablets that are closer to Android than its current line-up. Let’s see how that works out.

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Goodbye, Microsoft Zune Music.

The iPod, not to mention smartphones in general, have killed off the mp3 player industry, Microsoft’s Zune included. Also, Microsoft rolled out a new music service available on the Xbox and other mobile devices, including the Android. The new music service, dubbed “Groove Music” is set to cannibalize Microsoft’s Zune music service. Existing Zune Music Pass subscriptions will then be converted to Groove Music Pass subscriptions.

Zune Music is set to be shut down on November 15th, and conversions to Groove Music will commence between October 15th and November 15th. Should a user choose to terminate their Zune Music subscription before it’s fully consumed, they may be eligible for a refund. Zune Music Passes were at $9.99 a month starting October 3, 2011, while a Groove Music Pass subscription is also at $9.99 a month, or $99.90 annually.

For more information on the migration, and to check for information on refunds, head on over to the Zune retirement FAQ: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3096659