You Won’t Believe These Brands Tried Making Phones

Nothing’s Rob Godwin profiles seven brand-extension phones — from Amazon’s $170M Fire Phone writedown to Bullet Group’s 2024 bankruptcy — showing how brutal the smartphone market is even for established names.

• Amazon wrote off $170M on the Fire Phone, including $83M in unsold devices; price fell from $199 to 99 cents within two months of launch.
• Red Hydrogen 1’s holographic display shipped blurry and dim; its modular lens system was perpetually delayed and never reached customers.
• Bullet Group — ODM behind Kodak, Land Rover, Cat, and Motorola licensed phones — went bankrupt in early 2024 after a failed pivot to satellite messaging.
• Marshall London (2015) carried two headphone jacks and a brass volume wheel; Swedish licensee Zound Industries absorbed the financial loss while Marshall’s brand was unharmed.
• Puma Phone M1 launched in 2010 with no Wi-Fi and a resistive touchscreen at €399, when competitors already shipped capacitive screens.
• Amazon Fire Phone used four infrared cameras to track the user’s head for a gimmicky 3D tilt effect called dynamic perspective.
• Red Hydrogen 2 was cancelled in October 2019 when founder and CEO Jim Janard retired, ending the entire Hydrogen project.
• The licensing model protected heritage brands (Marshall, Kodak, Land Rover) from direct financial exposure when phones flopped, shifting losses to ODMs.

2026-01-22 · Watch on YouTube