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Amazon discounts the new Moto G4 and BLU R1 HD for Prime customers who accept lockscreen ads

Amazon Prime customers who want a discount on two new unlocked budget phones can get $50 off by accepting lockscreen advertisements!

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Published onJune 29, 2016

Amazon has come a long way from its modest, humble beginnings as an “upstart” online book seller. The market is now home to countless categories of products, including its own Kindle e-book readers and tablets. Indeed mobile phones are a venerable portion as well, and the company has just started a brand new offer that might be a bit familiar to some, yet is being rolled-out in a way that is sure to interest more than before.

Beginning this Wednesday, Amazon Prime customers who order either the BLU R1 HD or Motorola Moto G4 will be able to purchase the unlocked handsets for $50 and $150 respectively, which amounts to a $50 savings on each. The catch is quite simple: in exchange for the smaller price tag, the devices will ship with personalized advertisements on the lockscreens. The phones will be shipped when they are released, on July 12th.

Those who follow the shopping site and its products (i.e. the Kindle series) will no doubt be quite familiar with this new business model. For a few years now, Amazon has provided the same offers for its e-book readers, allowing customers to cut the cost down by a bit so long as they can live with advertising. One point of curiosity however, is that while the Kindles all have sleep screens on permanent “on” mode, mobile phones obviously turn off the display to conserve battery life. Presumably this means that ads on the Android handsets will also disappear when the display is turned off.

Nonetheless, this is seemingly a shockingly sensible solution for Amazon to offer. The aforementioned Kindle’s optional ad system has been in place for years now and people are therefore clearly OK with it, less Amazon would have put it out to pasture some time ago. Given the pop ads and whatnot appear everywhere anyway, the idea of having targeted marketing on a lock screen is probably not any more scandalous than the advertising bombardment that already exist.

It should be noted that, with the Kindle, customers are allowed to pay a fee to remove the ads should they want to do so later on, thereby essentially eliminating the small subsidy that was provided at the time of purchase. Will this also be possible for the smartphones? Perhaps an even bigger question: how can Amazon get people to keep the paid ads given the ability to root Android phones?

Still, this makes another potentially good reason to have Amazon Prime, especially because it’s then possible to get the phone delivered lickety split, to boot.

What do you think of this news? Do you think Amazon will begin to roll-out this platform for other, more expensive phones in the future? Does it sound like a good idea? Leave your thoughts in the comment section down below!