Amazon announces the end of their Halo division from July 31st

Amazon, earlier this week announced the end of their Halo division, assuring customers and employees that they will be compensated.

On Wednesday, 26^th April, Amazon Inc. announced that it was closing its Halo subsidiary, leading the tech giant to begin a company-wide hiring freeze. The Halo subsidiary was one that sold fitness and sleep trackers. The company announced that it will discontinue supporting Halo services as of July 31st and has assured customers that they will completely compensate those who purchased Halo devices within the previous twelve months.

In 2020, Amazon released the first Halo band, a fitness tracker that also included a subscription to certain Amazon health monitoring and analytic services. Later, a contactless sleep tracker and smart alarm clock called Halo View and Halo Rise were released. Similar to its rivals, Apple Inc. and Google, a division of Alphabet Inc., Amazon had made investments in consumer health-tracking technology, at times receiving regulatory attention for the sensitive data it sought to gather, such as body fat percentage via its fitness wristband.

It was announced in March that the second round of layoffs would take place and Amazon began contacting some of the affected employees on Wednesday. Employees affected by the cuts received emails from the heads of Amazon Web Services and the People Experience and Technology division, according to a representative from the company.

"We notified impacted employees in the U.S. and Canada today," the company said in a blog post.