According to Bloomberg, Panos Panay, who will become the former chief product officer, will go to Amazon to work. Panay is best known for his work on Microsoft's Surface line of products, but in recent years he has been in charge of the Windows Experience Group.
Amazon's hardware product chief, Dave Limp, announced last month that he will retire at the end of this year, and Amazon's hardware products have also undergone the same downsizing as the Surface brand. Amazon's Echo devices and smart assistant Alexa haven't fared as well as users appear to have little interest in purchasing products through Alexa and Echo, instead using them to turn off lights and perform other menial (and non-revenue-generating) tasks.
Amazon will hold its annual launch event for new devices on Wednesday at its new campus in Arlington, Virginia. Amazon's devices unit, which also makes Fire-brand TV streaming sticks, tablets and Kindle e-readers, was hit by layoffs last year as the company adjusted to slower growth and shuttered some projects. Microsoft is also expected to show off new hardware models as well as artificial intelligence capabilities at an event in New York on Thursday.
Panay had planned to host the Microsoft event, but he is not expected to attend Thursday's event. Amazon still has a lot of work to do if it wants to catch up with Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI when it comes to generative AI, and Panay seems to have a good chance in this area, at least from here. What do you think, can Panay reverse the decline of Amazon's hardware product portfolio and create performance that he was unable to achieve at Microsoft?
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