Some workers within Amazon’s hardware devices division – responsible for Kindle readers and Echo with Alexa speakers – say morale within the division has suffered amid mass layoffs, departures of key executive, and a weak development pipeline of new devices, Reuters reports Tuesday.
The division, known as Lab126, was a focus for Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, who portrayed it as an engine for future projects, but more recently it has been buffeted by mass layoffs and key executive departures, including leader Dave Limp, a 13-year veteran who has announced plans to step down later this year.
Reuters interviewed more than 15 current and former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to their employment terms, who described a hodgepodge of new devices in development, many of them aimed at encouraging customers to use the once ground-breaking Alexa voice service that now faces a stiff challenge in the age of generative AI and ChatGPT.
Amazon is secretive about its internal projects at Lab126, which has long been crucial to its drive to position itself as a tech innovator. Not all of them will be produced commercially, sometimes due to financial or market concerns, the sources said, while some have already been reworked or canceled altogether.
Though relatively small within Amazon’s sprawling empire, the device unit has been symbolically important as a gadget testing ground and Alexa’s public face through voice-assistant devices. Amazon has said its devices and services business is not profitable, without providing figures.
MacDailyNews Take: Hardware is hard and we much prefer the quality of an Apple HomePod or HomePod mini to an Alexa speaker, an Apple TV HD or 4K to Amazon Fire TV, etc.
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Amazon hardware/software are information gathering hubs. Customers are paying Amazon to gather as much of their data as possible, much of it personal/private, in order to use it in the most financial profitable way. Apple isn’t perfect but at least they still make efforts to preserve our privacy, albeit inconsistently.
IMO information gathering on Amazon HW is at best a tertiary goal. The HW is more likely meant to increase the number of ways to make purchasing from Amazon more sticky. Not much different from Apple integrating their products to improve the chances of purchases of other Apple products.
“morale within the division has suffered amid mass layoffs”.
As happens with any layoff. Figuring out they’re not special. Welcome to the real world.
People leaving in a quiet revolt for Amazon continuing to sell a reading device with DOS-level tech/experience…as if we are living in 1980’s. Say nothing of Alexa’s pernicious nosiness.