Amazon axes Halo health wearable in newest cost-cutting transfer

Halo app and band

Supply: Amazon

Amazon will not promote its Halo fitness and health tracker, the corporate introduced Wednesday.

Amazon unveiled the health-tracking bracelet in 2020, marking its first foray into wearable units and a deeper transfer into the fitness care area. Halo, together with an app, can observe customers’ job, frame fats and emotional state, and it is built-in with Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant. Remaining 12 months, Amazon expanded the Halo lineup with a bedside sleep tracker referred to as the Halo Upward thrust.

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Amazon will forestall supporting Halo units and the Halo app on July 31. Customers can delete their Halo fitness information from the app, and any last information can be deleted after Aug. 1, the corporate mentioned.

“At Amazon, we predict giant, experiment, and put money into new concepts like Amazon Halo in our efforts to thrill consumers,” the corporate mentioned. “Whilst we’re happy with what we constructed, we lately made the tough resolution to prevent supporting Amazon Halo efficient July 31, 2023.”

The corporate mentioned it’ll refund any purchases made within the final 12 months of Halo View, Halo Band, Halo Upward thrust and Halo accent bands. It is going to additionally refund any unused Halo subscription charges.

Halo is the newest Amazon product to get axed as CEO Andy Jassy aggressively cuts bills around the corporate amid an financial downturn and slowing retail gross sales. Many unproven bets just like the Glow video-calling software and Scout supply robotic had been sundown in contemporary months. The corporate additionally shuttered its nascent telehealth program, Amazon Care.

Amazon is in the midst of the most important layoffs in its 29-year historical past. The corporate lately wrapped up a spherical of layoffs impacting 18,000 other folks, a few of that have been in its units and products and services unit. Remaining month, Jassy introduced the corporate would lay off an extra 9,000 other folks, with lots of the cuts touchdown in its cloud computing, promoting, human assets and Twitch livestreaming devices.

Amazon is shedding some staff on account of the verdict to shutter the Halo line, Dave Limp, Amazon’s {hardware} leader, wrote in a memo to staff shared through an Amazon spokesperson.

“I’m so happy with the discovery and difficult paintings that went into construction Halo, however after comparing our present investments, our long-term objectives, and in mild of the present macroeconomic local weather, we needed to make a hard resolution,” Limp wrote. “It used to be no longer taken evenly, imagine me — and we acknowledge we’re dropping valued group individuals because of this.”

Melissa Cha, Amazon’s vp of sensible house and fitness, advised staffers in a separate memo that the corporate opted to sundown the Halo line because of vital headwinds, together with an an increasing number of crowded phase and unsure financial stipulations, The Verge reported.

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