Amazon to Replace Fire Tablets With Alexa Tablets on Android

Amazon will retire the Fire tablet brand in favor of Alexa Tablets. Panos Panay, Amazon's head of consumer electronics, confirmed the plan in an interview with Bloomberg The Verge.

The new Alexa Tablet lineup runs Android instead of Fire OS, with full access to the Google Play Store. That store was not available on Fire tablets. On those older models, Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, Google Drive and other Google services were only available through the browser, because the Amazon Appstore carried no official Google apps.

Existing Fire tablets are entering maintenance. Amazon will continue to provide security updates, but no hardware refreshes are planned.

Panay is Senior Vice President of Devices & Services at Amazon. He joined Amazon to lead that business when Dave Limp retired About Amazon. Amazon's new Echo Show devices are the first wave of Alexa hardware fully developed under his leadership Bloomberg.

The software change was telegraphed. On August 20, 2025, Reuters reported, citing sources, that Amazon planned to drop its homegrown software for Android in a Fire tablet revamp Reuters. That report said the shift was meant to address complaints about Fire OS and put the planned revamped tablet at around $400. Fire OS was a forked version of Android, a separate copy that Amazon maintained on its own. It was like maintaining a side road next to the main Android highway.

That separate path came with a long-standing app gap. Amazon announced it would end support for the Amazon Appstore on Android devices on August 20, 2025 Amazon Developer. Separate reporting described a split strategy, with Amazon planning lower-priced tablets on its Linux-based Vega operating system Thurrott. Vega is based on Linux and is already used in some Fire TV devices.

The current Fire tablet lineup includes Fire HD 8, Fire HD 10, and Fire Max 11. Amazon's official Devices news page now lists the replacement line as powerful tablets with Alexa+ built in, alongside an all-new family of tablets designed just for kids. The same portfolio includes Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio, which Amazon describes as featuring premium audio, next-generation AI processing and an Omnisense sensor.

Panay said Amazon has more hardware announcements coming throughout the fall. No laptop is coming. He said not to expect an Amazon-branded computer or laptop.

The broader context here is worth spelling out separately from the product facts. For years Amazon traded full Android compatibility for control of its storefront, default apps, and services. That approach helped keep hardware prices low and kept customers inside Amazon's billing and content system, but it left the tablets cut off from the standard Android app path that mobile device management tools, education buyers, and many developers support first.

In my view, the rebrand matters less than the compatibility change underneath it. Dropping Fire OS for Android with Play Store access removes the manual installs, missing banking apps, and browser-only Google workflows that made Fire tablets awkward in mixed-device homes and workplaces. It also simplifies work for developers who once had to decide whether to build and maintain a separate Appstore version.

Looking at what this means for buyers and IT owners, the practical questions now shift to update timing, how many years of Android version support Amazon will provide, kids profiles and parental controls, and how deeply Alexa+ is built into the system rather than running as a bundled app. If Amazon keeps the low prices that made Fire common while delivering standard app support at the higher end, these tablets become easier to recommend as shared home devices, travel devices, and managed endpoints. That exchange of control for interoperability should let people do more with them.