According to reports, Amazon has laid off dozens of engineers at it’s Lab126 hardware lab which designs and develops consumer devices like the Kindle, Echo, and Fire tablet. It was recently responsible for the Amazon Fire phone which has proved to be unsuccessful.
Apparently, Lab126 employs roughly 3000 people, so the redundancies won’t likely be a significant proportion of staff but they are reported to be the first since Lab126 was founded over 11 years ago.
A company like Amazon takes lots of risks so it’s inevitable that some will flop. The Fire phone may not have proved to be a success but obviously the Kindle in its various forms has been. And further products are rumoured to be in the pipeline including a clever little computer device especially for the kitchen which will presumably plug into Amazon’s grocery operation Amazon Fresh.