Amazon published blog post Just Walk Out is releasing an update on its technology, as reported Wednesday Fresh has been removed from grocery stores earlier this month. While extolling the virtues of Just Walk Out as a sales pitch for potential retail partners, the article lists a surprisingly small number of (non-Amazon) stores that use the technology. There are now “over 140 third-party locations with Just Walk Out technology in the US, UK, Australia and Canada.”
Note that this is not the number of companies or retail chains that license the technology; this is the total number of seats. And it is not the number in one state or even one country. Just Walk Out is used in “more than 140 third-party locations” in four countries with a combined population of approximately 465 million people.
On average, this means that there is one third-party Just Walk Out store for every 3.3 million people in these four countries. (They should be busy!) On the contrary, there there is More than one million retail locations in the US and Starbucks as of 2019 There was a There are 241 locations in New York City alone and over a million
There was Amazon reported had already been planning to remove Just Walk Out technology from Fresh grocery stores for about a year because it was too expensive and complex for larger retailers to operate and maintain. The company is now touting its technology as ideal for smaller stores with fewer customers and products — like its own Amazon Go stores. was busy closing over the past few years.
It was reported by the company gut A team of developers working on the Just Walk Out technology earlier this month. (You get an idea of how the laid-off employees left the office.) As part of recent layoffs from Amazon’s AWS division and Physical Stores Group, the company is said to be leaving only a “skeleton staff” to work on the technology. is moving forward. A skeleton staff sounds to the right to save a skeleton.
To be fair, some of these places are crowded. This includes nine retail stores at Seattle’s Lumen Field (home of the Seahawks and Sounders), located near Amazon’s headquarters. Delaware North, a major hospitality and entertainment company, has opened “more than a dozen” stores using the technology. Amazon says stores that have adopted Just Walk Out have reported increased transactions, sales and customer satisfaction.
Although Just Walk Out’s development team is aware, Amazon says it “continues to invent the next generation of this technology to improve the checkout experience for large-format stores.” Its next steps include improving latency for “faster and more reliable receipts,” new algorithms to better recognize customer movements, and new sensors.
If reports of the layoffs are accurate, a handful of the remaining Just Walk Out developers will be out on a limb.
