On the same day Apple revealed its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Amazon went in a bit of a different direction.

The company announced it would be dropping the price of its 32GB Fire smartphone from $200 to 99 cents, according to a report from Business Standard. To get that price, users must sign a two-year wireless contract with AT&T, the exclusive carrier.

Such a price drop has precedence but not very successful precedence.

"If history is any indication, this doesn't usually work," said Wayne Lam, an analyst with IHS Technology, adding that the so-called Facebook phone dropped to 99 cents last year but never caught on in the market.

Amazon put a lot of effort into the development of the Fire Phone, but sales never took off. Neither Amazon nor AT&T will release sales figures, but analysts say the Fire wasn't able to compete with the Apples and the Samsungs of the market.

"We had modest expectations, and the phone seems to be shy of those," said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, and added that he thinks the price cut will make a difference.

"The Fire was searching for a feature and just found it: a low price," he said. The price of the 64GB version of the phone also has been dropped, from $300 to $100, CNet reported.

Analyst Jan Dawson, of Jackdaw Research, said she didn't have high hopes for the Fire Phone from the start. If the device sold more than a few hundred thousand units in the first year, it would be a success. That hasn't been the case.

"It has probably done slightly worse than even I imagined," Dawson said. "This was always the phone for die-hard Amazon fans -- people who'd value an Amazon-centric smartphone above all else -- and the problem is that there just don't seem to be that many of those."