The company has reportedly been working on a new OS for all its devices for years now.
Amazon is developing a new operating system called Vega to replace the Android-based Fire OS on its smart home devices.
Vega is based on Linux and uses a “more web-forward application model,” encouraging developers to use React Native for cross-platform compatibility.
The shift to Vega aims to reach a wider audience and monetize inexpensive devices while providing consumers with a lighter, more efficient operating system for smart home devices.
Amazon offers a variety of smart home products, including smart TVs, smart displays, and smart speakers. They all run on the company’s own Fire OS, a fork of Android. This has allowed Amazon to offer the best of both worlds: Android app compatibility while customizing the OS per its requirements. But it appears Amazon is building an alternate operating system to replace the Android-based OS on its devices. A report sheds light on “Vega,” which is what Amazon’s new operating system is called internally.
The LowPass report claims the OS is in the advanced stages of development and has already been tested on some Fire TV streaming sticks. Amazon has apparently even informed some of its partners about transitioning to a new application framework, indicating that Vega is not Android-based. The company purportedly plans to ship Vega as the default OS on some Fire TV devices starting in 2024.
Amazon has seemingly been working on the new OS since 2017. The report claims that development on the OS is mostly complete, with the company focusing on the SDK and value additions since 2022.
Vega is reportedly based on Linux and uses a “more web-forward application model.” Amazon is seemingly telling app developers to use React Native for the application framework. This will ensure that developers can create apps that work on a wide range of operating systems, including iOS and Android.
Amazon eventually plans to replace the Android-based Fire OS with its new operating system across all its new devices, including Fire TVs, streaming sticks, and smart displays. Vega will also power Amazon’s in-car hardware, other IoT devices, and future products. It is unclear if any of the company’s existing devices will get the Vega update, though
So, why is Amazon shifting away from its current Android-powered Fire OS to Vega? While the exact reason is not clear, the report cites some industry insiders who claim that Amazon wants to reach “millions of eyeballs on a wide range of inexpensive devices,” and its custom OS will allow the company to monetize those eyeballs better.
While Amazon regularly rolls out updates for Fire OS, it does not update the underlying Android version that frequently. Fire OS 7, the operating system that powers most Amazon devices today, is based on Android 9, which was released in August 2018. And while there’s also Android 11-based Fire OS 8, it is only running on a handful of devices from the company.
Consumers should also benefit from this move, as Vega should be a lot lighter and better suited for running on low-end hardware than the Android-forked Fire OS. Google’s operating system was initially designed with mobiles in mind, so it has a lot of unwanted code for smart home devices, slowing them down.