Amazon has scaled back its home devices. In early May, the company made around a hundred layoffs within the Devices & Services division, primarily affecting the Alexa and Amazon Kids teams, and Lab126. The latter is the group's research and development unit, a veritable think tank for the American giant, which is responsible for the design of the Kindle, Echo speakers, and Fire TV sticks. But it's also responsible for some serious flops like the Fire Phone and the interactive children's device, Glow.
Looking for the next big idea
And despite this central role, Amazon has decided to create ZeroOne, a group tasked with designing "disruptive" technological devices. This team, split between the Seattle headquarters, San Francisco, and Sunnyvale, is working on new hardware and software.
Several job postings spotted by CNBC confirm the experimental side of this new division: "If you're excited about working on small, agile teams to create entirely new product categories, and you thrive on the ambiguity of disruptive innovation, we want to meet you," one of them reads.
Leading this team is J. Allard, a Microsoft veteran who was the architect of the Xbox (and the Zune music player, which failed miserably to become a credible alternative to the iPod). He joined Amazon in September 2024, and will work for Panos Panay... also a Microsoft defector. We're staying in the family.
The rest of the team will include talent from different branches of Amazon, such as Alexa, the cloud gaming service Luna, and the sleep tracker Halo. Amazon is banking on ZeroOne to reaffirm its ability to innovate and surprise, in a sector where the competition is not short of ideas.
Source: CNBC
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