When Amazon.com hired Panos Panayfrom Microsoft in 2023, senior executives hoped he could bring some of the devices magic he pulled off at the software giant to the e-commerce company. Three years later, Panay is back in his comfort zone.
Amazon on Thursday unveiled an entirely new product lineup: premium Alexa tablets meant to take on devices from Apple and Samsung. The tablets, featuring aluminum casing à la Apple, puts Amazon in direct competition with the iPhone maker after years of offering lower-budget Fire tablets that have primarily served as entertainment devices. Panay, senior vice president of Amazon devices, Alexa, and Leo, led the development of Amazon’s new tablets.
The tablets are made for “the moment you need it, in the background when you don’t. That’s the whole idea,” Panay said in a statement to Fortune. “We built these around how real people actually live. How they watch. How they read. How a family shares a single screen.”
With the new line of Alexa tablets, Amazon is also taking a different approach to software. Unlike Fire tablets, which are heavily optimized for Amazon services, the Alexa tablets run Android with full access to the Google Play Store.
The Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is the most premium offering at $499.99 for the 128-gigabyte version. It is 6.5-millimeters thin and features a 12-inch, 280 pixels-per-inch display. A pricier, $549 version has a “Nanomatte” display that the company said dramatically reduces screen glare. The tablet can be paired with a new Alexa Tablet Pro Pen and Pro Keyboard, creating a laptop-like setup similar to what Apple offers.
There is also a $329.99 Alexa Tablet 11, an 11-inch device, and a 8.7-inch Alexa Tablet 8 entry-point version. Amazon also launched two kids tablets.
While the prices are a notable step up from the Fire line of devices — the Fire HD 10 tablet with a 10.1-inch display has a list price of $154.99 for 32 gigabytes and is often on sale — Amazon is pricing the new Alexa tablets below Apple’s tablets. Apple’s 11-inch iPad costs $449 for the 128-gigabyte version. And the 11-inch iPad Pro, which has 264 pixels per inch and is 5.3-millimeters thin, starts at $1,199 for the 256-gigabyte version.
Although Amazon is undercutting Apple on price, Apple leads in display technology, connectivity, thinness, and storage options. Samsung, meanwhile, has its new Galaxy Tab S12+ starting at $1,199.99 for the base 256-gigabyte model.
Amazon is moving upmarket as tablet shipments decline. Market research firm IDC reported that global tablet shipments fell 12.3 percent year-over-year in this year’s second quarter to 33.6 million units, with U.S. shipments down 31.6 percent, as surging memory costs pushed prices up.
A boost for Alexa+
One of Amazon’s primary goals with the tablets is for people to use Alexa+, the company’s updated AI-based virtual assistant which it rolled out in general release earlier this year. On the tablets, Alexa can read what’s on the screen to help with tasks like planning around a page of hiking trails, and “live sessions” allow hands-free conversation. Alexa+ gave the company’s flagship assistant a smarter, more human upgrade and added AI capabilities such as booking restaurants. It is free for Prime members and $19.99 per month as a standalone subscription.
Amazon has not said how many subscribers it has, and the update has been overshadowed by leading chatbots from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Amazon struggled initially to roll out the smarter Alexa, and its original financial strategy with the assistant was to sell underpriced Echo smart speakers with Alexa in hopes of getting people to spend more across its ecosystem. That failed to work, and when it became clear that Alexa+ couldn’t be profitable on its own, Amazon tied the new Alexa to its Prime memberships.
Panay is known as the “godfather” of Microsoft’s Surface tablets, which were popular during his tenure at the company. At Amazon, he has tried to give the company’s products a more premium and focused feel, from Alexa+ to the Kindle Colorsoft, the first color Kindle e-reader, and the revamped Kindle Scribe models that compete with cutting-edge paper tablets like reMarkable.
Panay has also streamlined the number of events the company holds and changed its tactics for its hardware, which for years included a flurry of product launches. Panay is also known as an effusive onstage showman, making product launches a flashy, intimate affair when he holds them that feel closer to Apple’s past legendary showcases than to the overwhelming Amazon events that predated him.
The new Alexa tablets go on sale Oct. 14 in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, with a rollout to the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain starting Oct. 19.
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