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from the what-happened-to-just-selling-books-online dept.
Amazon is laying off "dozens" of employees at Lab126, the hardware-development center in Silicon Valley responsible for products like the Fire Phone, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Sources at Amazon "familiar with the matter" told the WSJ that the company has scaled back or halted numerous development projects, including a large-screen tablet and a smart stylus.
The WSJ's sources claim that the layoffs form part of a broad reorganisation at Lab126, which began last year after disappointing sales of the Fire Phone. This resulted in Lab126 combining its tablet, e-reader, and phone projects. In October 2014, it emerged that Amazon was sitting on over $83 million (~£54 million) of unsold Fire phones, which the company swiftly tried to shift by offering a substantial price drop.
It's not yet clear whether Amazon will continue its in-house smartphone development. Some engineers at Lab126 told the WSJ that development would be shelved, while another claimed it had been shifted to Seattle under Steve Kessel, an executive who helped spearhead the company's hardware unit and oversaw digital media like e-books and music.
Has Amazon bitten off more than it can chew with mobile devices?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Friday August 28 2015, @07:23PM
Their main problem is they didn’t market the fire phone to the same types that will buy a kindle. Amazon got a lot of fame for having the best tablet/ereaders, which has a fairly professional, utilitarian style. They instead went in a new direction with the phone, a newshiny android swag type deal. They muddled their brand recognition by doing that. Probably would have been better marketing a professional eink phone, which battery would last a long time like a kindle. Maybe have it come with an easy way to tie it into active directory or netware. Then branch out into the LCD shiny crap.
I was surprised they went the phone route at all. One would think they would go into the educational/commercial market with 8.5x11 tablet/readers which comes with a textbook/manual app.