Amazon Throws In The Towel: Fitness Brand Bites The Dust In Battle Against Apple Watch, Fitbit

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN has announced the discontinuation of its fitness brand that was originally launched to compete with Apple Inc.’s AAPL Watch and Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL Fitbit in the wearable market. 

What Happened: Amazon will no longer support its Amazon Halo fitness brand, effective July 31. The company will provide a full refund for purchases made within the last 12 months of the Amazon Halo View, Amazon Halo Band, Amazon Halo Rise and Amazon Halo accessory bands. 

Furthermore, customers who possess unused prepaid Halo subscriptions will receive a refund, and those who have paid subscriptions will not incur the monthly fee.

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“Beginning on Aug. 1, 2023, Amazon Halo devices, and the Amazon Halo app, will no longer function,” the company stated. 

Amazon also provided instructions to users, stating that to download or delete Halo health data, they could navigate to the Settings page within the app. 

Users who want to save their scan images to their phone’s camera Roll need to open the individual scan image, click on the button next to the camera icon and choose the “Save images to phone” option. 

The company said that any remaining Halo health data would be deleted after Aug. 1.

Why It’s Important: Amazon did not disclose the exact reasons behind the discontinuation of the Halo division, instead referring to it as an “experiment” that would no longer be backed by the company.

While some considered the Amazon Halo products to be potential rivals to the likes of Fitbit or Apple Watch, the wearables were missing several features commonly available in modern wearables, including tap payments, reported AppleInsider.  

Certain aspects of its tracking capabilities were also viewed as intrusive or unsettling.

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