Amazon is killing off its Glow video calling device for kids just a couple of months after its launch. In a statement shared with Bloomberg, the company confirmed that the device was being discontinued after Amazon offered a 55% discount on it earlier this week.
“At Amazon we think big, experiment, and invest in new ideas to delight customers,” said Amazon spokeswoman Kristy Schmidt. “We also continually evaluate the progress and potential of our products to deliver customer value, and we regularly make adjustments based on those assessments. We will be sharing updates and guidance with Glow customers soon.”
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The kids-focused mobile station was announced back in March 2022 with a $299 price tag in the US. Amazon Glow combined an 8” screen for video with a video projector that can create a 19-inch touch-sensitive space on a flat surface. On this projection mat, kids could enjoy shared activities with remote family members including games, animated storybooks, and more.
Amazon Glow was a product designed for the pandemic era, but things are slowly starting to go back to normal. The product was also targeting families with parents who need to travel for work interested in sharing activities with their kids remotely. That’s probably not a huge market either.
To its credit, Amazon is pretty good at experimenting with new products and killing them off pretty quickly when they fail. We all remember the infamous Amazon Fire phone that was released back in 2014 and discontinued a year later. As noted by Bloomberg, Amazon Glow has a 4.5-star rating based on 500+ reviews, but that probably wasn’t enough momentum for the company to keep investing in this product.