Amazon is planning to replace Android on FireTVs, smart displays, and other connected devices.
According to Lowpass, which first reported the story, the development of the new operating system known as Vega is already quite advanced. It has been tested on Fire TV streaming sticks, and the parcels-to-entertainment company has told a selected group partners that it intends to move to Vega as early as next year.
The majority of the OS development is already complete and the company is now focussing on SDK and the task of convincing developers that they should adopt it.
Several hundred people are said to be working on the project under former Mozilla engineer and Javascript expert Zibi Braniecki, who initially joined Amazon early last year to work on Alexa.
Only a year ago, reports emerged of 10,000 job losses within Amazon’s hardware team as the company struggled with $10 billion worth of losses in 2022. Despite being one of Amazon’s most successful products, the majority of Alexa units are sold at cost.
One advantage of a shift away from Android is that Amazon would be able to make its products considerably more advanced.
Amazon has been using Android Open Source Project to build Fire OS, meaning the software used is sometimes several years behind the curve. The latest iteration of FireTVs, run Fire OS 7, which is based on Android 9. Google itself released Android 14 this autumn.
Source: https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2023/11/14/amazon-building-own-os-to-replace-android/