Amazon Halo devices and the app will no longer be functional beginning August 31.
American e-commerce major Amazon announced on Wednesday to shut down its health and wellness monitoring system Amazon Halo and will also lay off some employees. The company will stop supporting Halo services effective July 31.
“We recently made the very difficult decision to stop supporting 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 taking care of our customers and supporting our employees,” the e-commerce major said in a blog.
Amazon said that its Halo devices and the app will no longer be functional beginning August 31. The company will fully refund any purchase made in the last 12 months of Amazon Halo View, Amazon Halo Band, Amazon Halo Rise, and Amazon Halo accessory bands. Additionally, users will get a refund of the unused prepaid subscription fees to their original payment method. For users who have a paid subscription, Amazon will not charge a monthly subscription fee starting immediately.
Furthermore, users of Amazon Halo can download or delete their health data from the Settings page in the app. To save their scan images to the camera roll, users need to open the individual scan image, click the button next to the camera icon, and select “Save images to phone.” The rest of the health data will be deleted after August 1, Amazon said.
Meanwhile, the company has already notified the employees affected by the decision in the United States and Canada and is following local processes in other regions. Additionally, the impacted employees will receive packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.
Previously as a part of its cost-cutting measures, Amazon first announced to let go of more than expected 18,000 employees in January. Informing about the decision, the company’s chief executive officer Andy Jassy that these changes would aid the company in pursuing long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure.
Later in March, after it concluded the second phase of its operating plan, the company announced another job cut and said to lay off 9,000 more employees mostly in AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch. Jassy then noted that Amazon had to streamline its costs and headcount amid an uncertain economy.
The company last year also discontinued some of its businesses in India including its wholesale distribution business, edtech platform Amazon Academy and food delivery venture Amazon Food amid a grim global economic outlook. Just recently, Amazon raised the price of its monthly and quarterly Prime subscription plans in India. The monthly Amazon Prime subscription has increased by a massive 67%, and the price of the quarterly plan has jumped by around 31%.
