Amazon to shut down Halo division, lays off some staff

(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:) said on Wednesday it was shutting down its Halo division that sells health and sleep trackers as the technology giant kicks off wider company layoffs.

The company said it will stop supporting Halo services from July 31, and will fully refund Halo devices purchases made in the preceding 12 months.

“We notified impacted employees in the U.S. and Canada today,” the company said in a blog post.

The company had introduced the original Halo band in 2020, which came as a fitness tracker along with a subscription to certain health monitoring and analysis services from Amazon. It later released a new version called Halo View and Halo Rise, a contact-less sleep tracker and smart alarm clock.

Like peers Apple Inc (NASDAQ:) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:) Inc’s Google, Amazon has invested in health-tracking technology for consumers, at times drawing regulatory scrutiny for sensitive information it aimed to collect – like body fat percentage via its fitness wristband.

Amazon, which in March announced it was laying off 9,000 workers as part of its second retrenchment drive, started informing some of the affected employees on Wednesday. Heads of Amazon Web Services and the People Experience and Technology team emailed affected staff about the cuts, the company said.