Amazon has decided to discontinue its health-focused Halo division. The company has halted the sale of its three Halo products and will lay off parts of the Halo team.
Melissa Cha, Amazon’s VP of smart home and health, informed staffers in an email obtained by The Verge that the decision to wind down the Halo program was difficult.
She explained that the Halo division faced significant challenges, including a highly competitive market and an uncertain economic environment.
Despite positive feedback from customers, Amazon needs to prioritize resources to benefit customers and ensure the long-term health of the business.
Cha’s email also indicated that all Halo hardware would be phased out over the coming months. According to the Wayback Machine, the Halo View was available earlier this month, and both the Band and Rise were available last week.
However, these products have since been removed from Amazon’s website, although they are still available through some third-party retailers as of this writing.
Amazon spokesperson Kristy Schmidt told in an email, “We continually evaluate the progress and potential of our products to deliver customer value, and we regularly make adjustments based on those assessments.
We recently made the 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 announcement comes as no major surprise. Amazon has initiated another round of layoffs and faced challenges entering the fitness tracker market late.
The original Halo Band, launched in 2020, was a basic tracker, lagging behind competitors like Fitbit, Apple, and Samsung, which had already introduced advanced features such as EKG and atrial fibrillation monitoring.
The Band was notable for its ability to create a 3D image of a user to measure body fat and monitor vocal tone, though it faced controversy.
This was followed by the Halo View in 2021 and the recent Halo Rise, a contactless sleep tracker and smart alarm clock.
Amazon has announced that it will fully refund any customers who purchased a Halo device or accessory band within the last 12 months.
All unused prepaid Halo subscription fees will also be refunded, and users will no longer incur charges.
The company has noted that the devices will cease functioning on August 1st, and all remaining data will be deleted. Users can download or delete their data from the Halo app’s Settings page before this date.
