Amazon has decided to close its health-focused Halo division, the edge to learn. Amazon has stopped selling its three Halo products and plans to lay off parts of the Halo team.
Melissa Cha, Amazon’s vice president of smart homes and health, told employees in an email we obtained earlier the edge. Recently, Halo has faced significant headwinds, including an increasingly crowded sector and an uncertain economic environment. While our customers love many aspects of Halo, we must prioritize resources and maximize benefits for customers and the long-term health of the business.”
Cha went on to write that all Halo hardware will be discontinued, with operations winding down over the next several months. According to the Wayback Machine, Halo View was available earlier this month, while Band and Rise were both available last week. However, it appears that the Band, View, and Rise have since been pulled from Amazon, though they are available at some third-party retailers as of this writing.
“We constantly evaluate the progress of our products and their potential to deliver value to customers, and we regularly make adjustments based on those evaluations,” said Amazon spokeswoman Kristi Schmidt. the edge in a letter. “We recently made the difficult decision to discontinue support for Amazon Halo effective July 31, 2023. We are incredibly proud of the invention and hard work that went into building Halo on behalf of our customers, and our priorities are the care of our customers and the support of our employees.”
The news is not a huge surprise. Not only did Amazon kick off another round of layoffs today, but the company was also incredibly late to the fitness tracker game. The original Halo Band was a simple tracker launched in 2020. At that time, competitors like Fitbit, Apple, and Samsung had added EKG and atrial fibrillation features to their smartwatches. The simple ensemble, while affordable, was somewhat controversial. Two specific features are that a 3D image of the user can be generated to measure body fat, as well as to monitor the user’s tone when speaking to others. He followed that up with Halo View in 2021 and recently launched Halo Rise, a contactless sleep tracker and smart alarm clock.
In a blog post, Amazon now says it will fully refund any customers who purchased a Halo device or band accessory in the last 12 months. All unused prepaid Halo subscription fees will be refunded, and users will no longer be charged. Amazon also indicated that the devices will stop working on August 1st and all remaining data will be deleted. Users can also download or delete their data earlier via the Settings page in the Halo app.
Update April 26 3:15 PM: This post has been updated to include Amazon’s statement and product recall information for customers.