Once a modest online seller of books, Amazon is now one of the largest companies in the world, and its former CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the world’s most wealthy person. We track developments, both of Bezos and Amazon, its growth as a video producer, the popular Prime service, as well as its own hardware, which includes the Amazon Kindle e-reader, Amazon Kindle Fire tablets, and Amazon Fire TV streaming boxes.
Apple’s and Amazon’s new smart displays might make smart displays actually useful.
“Our newer businesses, ranging from Grocery to Pharmacy to Amazon Leo to Zoox are progressing encouragingly,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says as part of the company’s Q3 earnings report, which revealed total revenue of $201.9 billion. “There has never been a trillion dollar revenue business, and we may have two of them in the next 5-10 years.”
In the last 30 days Amazon has launched new tablets, a new Kindle, a picture frame, and multiple new Echo devices. Now the company is cutting around 250 positions from its devices and services team, though Reuters says they’re primarily focused on software development. Amazon did not confirm a reason for the layoffs, but developers are facing increased pressure from increasingly advanced AI coding tools.
The Echo Time is cute, has great clock faces, and is designed for the bedroom — no cameras allowed. I’m hoping it will fill the Echo Dot-with-clock-shaped hole in my life, and its design is a fun throwback to the 2017 OG spot.
But $200?? Here’s my hands-on video and first impressions:
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And one thing I really don’t like.
Watch my hands-on with Amazon’s newest smart display in this video, and catch my full first impressions here.
The deal was announced in April and is expected to close in 2027. It gives Amazon Globalstar’s constellation of 25 satellites and its spectrum — a welcome boost given its stalled launch timeline — and means Leo will now power the satellite services for Apple’s supported iPhones and Apple Watches.
[The Federal Communications Commission]
The company’s low-key product launch was designed to give each device more attention, according to Panos Panay.
Amazon’s $200 smart alarm clock is angling for a spot on your bedside table.
It’s Amazon’s most ambitious smart display to date, but has it priced itself out of the game?
Star Wars: Galactic Racer was available to stream on Luna at no extra cost to Prime subscribers the same day it launched on other platforms, and in a post celebrating the one-year anniversary of Luna’s relaunch, Amazon says it plans to bring more “major” day-and-date releases to Prime members.
Luna’s user base has also grown “fivefold” since the relaunch, Amazon’s gaming GM, Jeff Gattis, says in the post. I spoke to Gattis earlier this year about Amazon’s plan for games.
[Amazon Game Studios]
After adding the option to annotate Kindle ebooks with handwritten notes on its new Alexa Tablets, Amazon has brought the same functionality to the Kindle Android app, as some users in the Kindle subreddit have discovered. It currently appears limited to Android tablets and phones that support a stylus, and it hasn’t come to the iPadOS version of the app yet.
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Amazon started letting US and UK users stream games from Luna inside Prime Video in July, and today the feature will be available in Canada, France, Italy, and Spain to Amazon Prime subscribers on Fire TVs, Amazon says.
In November, Luna in Prime Video will launch in the remaining countries where Luna is available that don’t already have the feature: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Sweden.
[Amazon Game Studios]
The Greatest is an eight-episode series premiering November 4th that looks at the life of one of the greatest sportsmen to ever grace the Earth. Jaalen Best stars as Ali, and Michael B. Jordan is an executive producer.
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The screen is gorgeous, the hardware works, and it finally runs full Android. But there’s too much Amazon in my tablet.
This slightly longer look at the new Amazon series doesn’t offer much more info than the original teaser that dropped in July. It is certainly a moodier and darker trailer, though. The show has been in the works since at least 2022, but it’ll finally hit streaming on November 25th of this year.
According to Variety, during a panel at New York Comic Con this weekend, Cage said:
“Amazon is a very AI-friendly company, to the tune of $50 billion invested in OpenAI … I am not an AI-friendly actor, so it’s like, connect those dots! I’m not a member of their club. I didn’t sign the waiver to let him use AI on ‘Spider Noir.’ I’m probably not going to be working with that studio again, but that’s okay.”
Despite not deploying any new space-internet satellites since early July because of issues at launch partners, Amazon says it’s on track “to launch initial service in 2026” with its existing 396 Leo satellites, having already missed its revised “mid-2026” target. “We’re still doing work to raise them into final position, and then you know there’s a lot of work on the ground to do,” says Amazon VP Chris Weber.
Early adopters should temper expectations, however, until the Leo constellation gets closer to its goal of 3,232 satellites.
Amazon is determined to turn Alexa Plus into a do-everything AI assistant that can compete with Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and the rest. But after a year of testing, The Verge’s Jen Tuohy has mixed feelings on how it’s all going. And on whether a new tablet is the right way to fix it.
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Amazon’s assistant can’t always remember who I am or where my daughter goes to school — but it can now reliably turn on my lights.
The Alexa line is also Amazon’s first tablet to run full-fledged Android with access to the Play Store.
