Amazon Halo fitness wearable dead in latest cost-cutting move

Amazon will no longer sell its Halo health and fitness tracker, the company announced Wednesday.

Amazon unveiled the health-tracking bracelet in 2020, marking its first foray into wearable devices and a deeper move into the health care space. Halo, in combination with an app, can track users’ activity, body fat and emotional state, and it’s integrated with Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant. Last year, Amazon expanded the Halo lineup with a bedside sleep tracker called the Halo Rise.

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Amazon will stop supporting Halo devices and the Halo app on July 31. Users can delete their Halo health data from the app, and any remaining data will be deleted after Aug. 1, the company said.

“At Amazon, we think big, experiment, and invest in new ideas like Amazon Halo in our efforts to delight customers,” the company said. “While we are proud of what we built, we recently made the difficult decision to stop supporting Amazon Halo effective July 31, 2023.”

The company said it will refund any purchases made in the last year of Halo View, Halo Band, Halo Rise and Halo accessory bands. It will also refund any unused Halo subscription fees.

Halo is the latest Amazon product to get axed as CEO Andy Jassy aggressively cuts expenses across the company amid an economic downturn and slowing retail sales. Many unproven bets like the Glow video-calling device and Scout delivery robot were sunset in recent months. The company also shuttered its nascent telehealth program, Amazon Care.

Amazon is in the middle of the largest layoffs in its 29-year history. The company recently wrapped up a round of layoffs impacting 18,000 people, some of which were in its devices and services unit. Last month, Jassy announced the company would lay off an additional 9,000 people, with most of the cuts landing in its cloud computing, advertising, human resources and Twitch livestreaming units.

Amazon is laying off some employees as a result of the decision to shutter the Halo line, Dave Limp, Amazon’s hardware chief, wrote in a memo to employees shared by an Amazon spokesperson.

“I am so proud of the invention and hard work that went into building Halo, but after evaluating our current investments, our long-term goals, and in light of the current macroeconomic climate, we had to make a difficult decision,” Limp wrote. “It was not taken lightly, believe me — and we recognize we are losing valued team members as a result.”

Melissa Cha, Amazon’s vice president of smart home and health, told staffers in a separate memo that the company opted to sunset the Halo line due to significant headwinds, including an increasingly crowded segment and uncertain economic conditions, The Verge reported.

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