Amazon ups the ante with Al-upgraded devices

With Fire TV Sticks and other items, firm targets both budget and luxury markets.

- By Mark GuRMAN

PANOS PANAY, shown last week at a New York event, is excited for Amazon's updated $40 4K Fire TV Stick.

(MICHAEL NAGLE Bloomberg)

When Amazon.com Inc. recruited longtime Microsoft Corp. product chief Panos Panay in 2023 to run its devices division, his new colleagues thought the e-commerce giant was preparing to take its consumer gadget line upscale.

Panay pushed back on the idea during an all-hands meeting with thousands of engineers from the Alexa, Echo and Fire TV brands. But his vision for the business didn’t come into clearer focus until this week, when the executive unveiled a suite of new products at an event in New York. The message: Panay aims to build devices that people want to show off in their homes and use — at every price tag. “The idea is putting a lot of detail into every product,” he said in an interview.

Though most of the new devices, including updated smart speakers, e-book readers, home security tools, TV accessories and other offerings, do carry higher prices, the company’s more affordable products are equally key, Panay said. “The superpower of designing for cost is such a rare talent,” he said. “When you just anchor on that and now youre making great products and you can serve everyone — that’s how we can have impact on the world.”

Ralf Groene, a former top designer at Microsoft who came out ofretirement earlier this year to become head of design at Amazon, echoes that sentiment. “There's lots of sophistication in the material, but we don’t want you to be like, ‘Oh, it’s so sophisticated.’ It needs to blend in.” He compares it to not noticing your shoes when you run. Or when you play the guitar and are “just into the music,” Groene said.