{"id":406787,"date":"2025-10-01T23:24:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/amazon-is-overhauling-its-devices-to-take-on-apple-in-the-ai-era-crypto-news\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T23:43:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T18:13:35","slug":"amazon-is-overhauling-its-devices-to-take-on-apple-in-the-ai-era-crypto-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/amazon-is-overhauling-its-devices-to-take-on-apple-in-the-ai-era-crypto-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon is overhauling its devices to take on Apple in the AI era – Crypto News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When Amazon.com Inc. recruited longtime Microsoft Corp.product chief Panos Panay in 2023 to run its devices division, his new colleagues thought the e-commerce giant was preparing to take its consumer gadget lineupscale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Panay pushed back on the idea duringan all-hands meeting with thousands of engineers from the Alexa, Echo and Fire TV brands. But his vision for the business didn’t come into clearer focus until this week, when the executive unveiled a suite of new products at an event in New York. The message: Panay aims to build devices that people want to show off in their homes and use \u2014 at every price tag. \u201cThe idea is putting a lot of detail into every product,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Though most of the new devices, including updatedsmart speakers, e-book readers,home security tools,TV accessories and other offerings, do carry higher prices, the company\u2019s more affordable products are equally key, Panay said. \u201cThe superpower of designing for cost is such a rare talent,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you just anchor on that and now you\u2019re making great products and you can serve everyone \u2014that\u2019s how we can have impact on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Amazon Launches Color Kindle with Stylus, $40 TV Stick with 4K Video<\/h2>\n

RalfGroene, a former top designer at Microsoft who came out of retirement earlier this year to become head of design at Amazon, echoes that sentiment. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of sophistication in the material, but we don\u2019t want you to be like, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s so sophisticated.\u2019 It needs to blend in.\u201d He compares it to not noticing your shoes when you run. Or when you play the guitar and are \u201cjust into the music,\u201dGroene said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While Panay is thrilled with Amazon\u2019sslick-looking new Echo speakersand Kindle e-readers<\/a>, he talks most proudly about an updated $40 4K Fire TV stick \u2014an unglamorousperipheral that lets people stream programing on their television. That product has a new operating system with improved speed and performance \u201con the cheapest possible 4K device,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIn my heart, that\u2019s a great product,\u201d Panay said,\u201cbecause so many can afford that and get an incredible experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, making more premium hardware \u2014something Panay calls the \u201csignature\u201d line \u2014 to generate higherprofit margins, a la Apple, is also a major part of the goal. Amazon\u2019s hardware division has long been seen as a loss leader \u2014with the real money coming from subscriptions and purchases made through the Alexa voice assistant.Panay disputes that view.While the overall division continues to lose money, some product lines are profitable, and others are heading in that direction, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Panay also oversees Amazon\u2019s efforts beyond Alexa and devices, including its push into satellite internet through Project Kuiper and autonomous vehicles with Zoox. Theprofit drive has been a priority for the group in recent years as Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy seeks to cut costs and reform a unit that sometimesoperated as a borderline research lab.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMy belief is that our job is to make devices the next big business at Amazon,\u201d Panay said. To accomplish that \u2014 and continue building the organization \u2014certain levers need to be pulled to make the business more successful, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The revamped devices could help. Other than the Fire TV stick, most of the new Amazon-branded hardware has a higher price tag. The latest Echo Show 8, for instance, is $80 more than the current model.And the new color Kindle Scribe is the priciest Amazon e-reader by about $200. With those higher prices, you\u2019re also getting a much better product, Panay said. But you\u2019re not getting an overhaulbuilt around high-end metals or the world\u2019s priciest fabrics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe first transformation is just elevating those products to the next generation of what they should be,\u201d Panay said. \u201cIt\u2019s just the beginning of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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His department\u2019s top leaders assemble every Thursday for confidential planning discussions, and they\u2019ve created a road map for thenext three years of products, Panay said. A key first step was releasingan AI-fueledversion of Amazon\u2019s voice assistant, Alexa , a rollout that began in March. That setthe stage for a device strategy: \u201cGreat products made even better through ambient AI,\u201d Panay said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Though Alexa can run onAmazon gadgets dating back more than five years, the latesthardware isthe first to include the system already installed. The devicesalso havenew features.The updated Echo Show \u2014a smart speaker with a screen \u2014combines AI with sensors to know who just walked up to the device. It then immediately displays a person\u2019spreferences andcan serve uptailored podcasts or photos. The Kindle, meanwhile, can upload a user\u2019s notes to help fulfill Alexa queries made on speakers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While the company is now confident enough to include Alexa as the default option on its new devices, the rollout hasn\u2019t been entirely smooth. Users have complained about slow deployment, broken compatibility with some appliancesand <\/a>the system misunderstanding commands. Still, Panay is all in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis is not an easy transition,\u201d he said, given that hundreds of millions of people use the current version. Still, \u201can Alexa home is probably the most exciting home product that I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Amazonalready has double-digit millions of users running the new Alexa, which costs either $20per month or comes free with a Prime subscription, but the company is working at full speed to improve it, Panay said. \u201cEverybody will want it and use it,\u201d he said, adding that it will take time to resolve kinks across every use case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel Rausch, Panay\u2019s lieutenant in charge of Alexa and Echo, saidthe results are already promising: The new interface boasts two to three times more usage than the old-school Alexa \u2014for those who have it. (The regular Alexa still has hundreds of millions of users).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a world where people are glued to their smartphones and computer displays, Panay wants to steer Amazon users in the other direction. That means creating AI devices that work in the background and require less screen time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But plenty of other companies are chasing that dream, includingApple, Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google andMeta Platforms Inc. Even Panay\u2019s predecessor, Dave Limp, had been exploring the idea at Amazon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For Amazon to be a true contender in this market, the company will finally need tocrack the code on mobile devices. A decade ago, it tried and failed with theFire Phone \u2014back when Panay was at Microsoft designing tablet-laptop hybrids. The company is working on future earbuds and smart glasses that tap into Alexa, but the real win will be something entirely new that\u2019sportable and built around AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s an entire paradigm shift of user interfaces that\u2019s coming \u2014I think the way people interact with their devices is being challenged,\u201d Panay said. \u201cI am a firm believer in ambient AI and being able to talk to something, have that conversation wherever, whenever, however you want to. I think it\u2019ll take different form factors to accomplish that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To help, Amazonacquired a startup called Bee in August. That company developed a wristband that can record a person\u2019s day and send theuser a summary to a phone app. Though Amazon didn\u2019t discuss the idea during its product unveiling Tuesday, it aims to eventually update the deviceand tie it into Alexa .<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To reshape Amazon\u2019s hardware group, Panay has brought in collaborators from his Microsoft days,as well asveterans from Amazon itself. The team includes Aidan Marcuss, who worked on Windows until last year andnow heads Amazon\u2019s TV business, as well asJ Allard, the co-inventor of Xbox who nowleads a team focused on new form factors. Ring creator Jamie Siminoff, meanwhile, returned earlier this year. Perhaps the most significant addition is the German-born Groene, who left his Microsoft role when Panay exited.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When Groene joined Amazon eight months ago, his first order of business was bringing all of the company\u2019s designers \u2014 across hardware, softwareand user experience \u2014 under one roof. That createda structure similar to the way Apple develops its products.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before the shift, design was implemented on a product-by-product basis by individual product managers. While this structure allowed for efficient product creation, there were silos that prevented teams from building on one another\u2019s achievements, Groene said. It also yielded a slate of mostly utilitarian products that, aside from the Amazon smile logo, shared few common design traits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Two other major changes: involving design from day one of the product process and making rapid prototyping a core part of development. Rausch, who has worked in Amazon\u2019s devices division since 2009, saidthe biggest change is that sketch artists, prototypers, material scientistsand engineers now work together from the start.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cBringing it all together much sooner, iterating on the product much sooner, setting the bar higher much sooner lets you end up with something much more complete and just frankly better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Amazon is launching its new products just weeks after Apple rolled out new iPhones \u2014 some of the company\u2019s biggest updates in years \u2014 proving that this decades-oldform factor is here to stay. Meanwhile, Meta released new smart glasses with a display earlier this month, showing that companies outside of Apple are eager and capable of introducing entirely new categories of devices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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OpenAI also looks to become a contender in mobile hardware, withex-Apple designer Jony Ive working on a bevy of new AI-centric gadgets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For Amazon to become a true leader in devices, it will need breakthroughs that go beyond its current lineup. It will also need to convince users that Alexa and its AI is worth paying for \u2014lestthey revert to or downgrade to the old version of Alexa. In any case, it will take years for the company\u2019s strategy to take shape, Groene said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s really a journey,\u201d he said. \u201cIn 12 months, you\u2019ll see the story one step further, but it\u2019s still not the full picture. It\u2019ll take its time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Amazon.com Inc. recruited longtime Microsoft Corp.product chief Panos Panay in 2023 to run its devices division, his new colleagues thought the e-commerce giant was preparing to take its consumer gadget lineupscale. Panay pushed back on the idea duringan all-hands meeting with thousands of engineers from the Alexa, Echo and Fire TV brands. But his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[21853,16,13138,529,284,263,262,41254,260,259,258,265,101,202,261,264],"class_list":["post-406787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-metaverse","tag-ai-devices","tag-amazon","tag-amazon-echo","tag-apple","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-axie-infinity","tag-axs","tag-color-kindle","tag-decentraland","tag-facebook","tag-game","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-microsoft","tag-nft","tag-sandbox","tag-vr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":406792,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406787\/revisions\/406792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}