Amazon is phasing out Fire Tablets because they weren’t ‘giving customers what they were asking for’

Terrence O'Brien is the Verge’s weekend editor. He’s covered the tech industry for over 18 years and knows a thing or two about synths.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Amazon’s head of consumer electronics, Panos Panay, confirmed the company would phase out the Fire brand in favor of Alexa Tablets.

The new lineup runs proper Android, instead of the custom Fire OS, and has full access to the Play Store, which wasn’t available on Fire tablets. To make matters worse, Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, Google Drive, and other services were only available via the browser on Fire tablets; the official Google apps were not available in the Amazon Appstore.

The Fire tabletline “wasn’t giving customers what they were asking for,” Panay told Bloomberg, which appears to be access to Google services, higher-quality hardware, and less in-your-face advertising on the lock screen. Amazon will still provide security updates...

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