Amazon continues to cut its electronic product development activities and its R&D centers in Haifa and Tel Aviv are paying the price. As part of the second wave of layoffs in which the company is shedding 9,000 employees worldwide, several dozens of employees have been fired in Israel, probably 40-50 employees.
This is part of Amazon's plans to cut costs of developing peripheral electronic products, such as the Halo health wristband and the Alexa virtual assistant, in favor of greater investment in AI. The company invested in these products, as well as in delivery drones, systems for smart supermarket management without cash registers, and Kindle Fire tablets - but these products never gained significant success compared with products launched by competing companies and their profitability is questionable.
Amazon's wave of global layoffs began last week, in which employees were fired in the advertising, video games divisions as well as in Twitch, the social network for influencers based on live streaming. Yesterday the latest wave of layoffs reached employees in profitable sectors such as cloud computing and human resources in the US, Canada, Costa Rica and other countries. Amazon is also cutting back on other activities such as expanding warehouses due to the economic crisis in the US, which reduces purchasing power and dampens consumer demand.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 27, 2023.
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