Amazon is laying off a further 9,000 workers globally as the e-commerce behemoth intensifies its cost-cutting initiatives. CEO Andy Jassy informed the company’s staff of the news in a memo, noting that employees in the Amazon Web Services, human resources, advertising, and Twitch businesses will be most impacted by the change, with the layoffs occurring over a few weeks.
In addition to the closure of several facilities in the UK and an Amazon Fresh store in London, it comes after a previous round of 18,000 layoffs that were announced in January. How the cutbacks will impact many jobs in the UK is still being determined. The Seattle-based e-commerce powerhouse employs almost 70,000 people in the UK, whose share price has dropped nearly 50% in the last year. Across the world, 1.5 million people were employed by Amazon as of the end of 2022.
The shares of Amazon decreased by 1.5%
Once Wall Street markets opened, Amazon shares decreased 1.5% and are now trading at $97.50. The decline cost CEO Jeff Bezos more than $1 billion and pulled Amazon’s market capitalization back below $1 trillion.
Other internet companies like Amazon have also trimmed their personnel in recent months. In response to a decline in advertising sales, Facebook parent firm Meta revealed intentions to reduce 5,000 positions and trim another 10,000 employees this week. In contrast, 12,000 positions were slashed at Google in January.
According to the tracking website, layoffs.fyi, there have been close to 140,000 layoffs in the technology industry globally since the year’s beginning. Reportedly, e-commerce behemoth Amazon has chosen one of the Big Four accounting firms to conduct the due diligence process for acquiring MX Player. According to reports, the procedure might take 30–40 days to complete.
Ecommerce giant will purchase MX player
We previously stated that Amazon and Times Internet were in-depth negotiations for selling Times Internet’s MX Player video streaming business.
If all goes according to plan following the due diligence report, Amazon will purchase MX Player for between INR 600-INR 900 Cr in the following two months. The e-commerce behemoth already runs an advertisement-supported MiniTV service and a streaming platform with a subscription model called Prime Video in India. For Indian consumers, Prime Video provides ad-free music, video streaming services, and free shipping on a few things.
MiniTV, on the other hand, focuses primarily on internet and smartphone consumers despite not being a subscription-based platform. About MX Player, it was first created as a video player by the South Korean business J2 Interactive. It was acquired by Times Internet in 2018 for roughly $140 million and later transformed into an ad-supported video streaming service. MX Player asserts that over 300 million users of their software worldwide exist.
