Amazon devices chief Panos Panay on the new color Kindle, AI, and his first year on the job

Now these are my notes for the last meeting I was in, so I'm going to protect that a little bit. My eyesight isn't that good. You see, it's cleaned up and it's simplified, right? Oh, now I can read it. It says, 'Tell Todd about the plans for conversational Alexa.' I'm pretty sure that's what it says.

Yeah, first off, it's awesome to see you too, man. Like, it really is. We're here, we're hanging out, we're in Bellevue. It's kind of fun. I took the right fork to come and meet you coming over the bridge. I didn't go left into Redmond, but we can talk about all that later.

That's funny. That's really funny, actually.

Fire TV, yeah, absolutely. So just to start off here, by the way, all super cool in their own right, and all pretty awesome when you see them coming together for the future. It's pretty rad, yeah.

I mean, it's an amazing array of products, and like, you know, we talk about it as a team, they stand alone so well for our customers, for uniquely what they want to do, but you can also see how they all come together in a pretty beautiful way. When you think about what you get to impact worldwide, you think about the number of customers that are using the devices every day, we have over a half a billion, if you will. When you start putting it together, like worldwide hundreds of millions of users, you get pretty inspired on what you can do to help their lives be better, be just part of it. And for me, that's everything. How do you make a customer's life easier? And you just think about it. And then you got these future products of Kuiper and Zoox, and how they kind of start to transform within technology and where the technology is going. It's been pretty inspiring for me.

I don't think so. I want to double it. How about that? I don't think so. Here's what I would say. There's a moment coming down the pipe here. AI is this transformative platform, not something to be dismissed. It's real, and that transformation bringing everything together is quite awesome. So I think it almost is a simplifier as well when you look across it all. So I don't think it's too much. I think there's so much more we can do for customers. And I'll say this, Todd, like what a team, like the team at Amazon, in devices specifically, which I can speak to, is so passionate about what they do and focused on customers and delivering for customers, and then just inventing and creating. Like it's so fun, man. I can't quite explain it.

For sure. A lot of times the best products are better once they get simpler, and focusing on what customers need and being a little bit more directive. I think to your point, yeah, you do want to simplify even across the portfolio, like what products customers want to use, need to use, maybe have to use depending on what they're accomplishing. I think a little bit of simplification is a good thing.

I have my Scribe right in front of me. You've got the new Scribe there in front of you.

Well, there's a couple of things. One, if you just start with reading in books, so go to the high level, not, I don't want to pull you back and overuse a point, but at the end of the day, people are reading more now than we've ever seen. You have engagement on Kindle is about as high as it's been. You've got the highest kind of growth and sales numbers, if you will, for Kindle in the last 10 years. And so you're looking at kind of a resurgence of reading, which is inspiring to me. Color is the next step. You have animation that comes into books. You are able to project exactly what it is that the author was trying to portray, whether it's through the cover or if it's through a comic book or it's through a children's book. And now you're getting the real vibrancy and the emotion that comes with color. You know, think of just, there's terms out there that I talk about, 'tickle me pink' or 'green with envy.' You know, we use colors to describe emotion in many ways. It's like quite powerful. And so we know that you can pull emotion out of these products because you put so much emotion into them, and we talk about it all the time. And one of the inventions that was so important was to bring color to the Kindle. Now I say it that way because invention in the spirit of not only did the emotion have to come into the product, you had to still keep a perfect reading experience, meaning the page turning had to be seamless, no pixelation, perfect contrast. And so you have a team that's obsessed about that stuff and making sure it was just right. And you know, it's Colorsoft, it is softer on the eyes, it is a softer color. You can look at the colors right in front of you when you're looking at your Kindle Colorsoft there. You can see them both pop in an elegant way, but also be true to the nature of the image. And I think that's pretty important.

Well, that's fascinating. I don't think we've used that analogy, but it's pretty good. It's pretty good. I think so. I mean, I think of it more as when you remember that first newspaper with beautiful color ink on the cover, and you're like, 'Wow,' it had this newspaper feel to it. But the truth of the color of that moment, whether it was a World Series moment, just because we're talking during the World Series, or whatever it might have been, and those are a little bit more emotional when that pops, and then you can see that softness, but also the true-to-life nature of it.

Here's what I can say. The team obsessed over making sure that colors didn't kind of blend or wash through or wash out. I remember vividly one conversation, no pun intended, but I remember this moment where the team had brought forward a series of just the color filters. We're using some of the oxide backplane and like just getting that front light right. And we're looking at each one of these products, and they're all tuned differently, Kindle Colorsofts. And the big decision was, can you see the seeds on the strawberry? I only say it because it was this beautiful picture of multiple strawberries in a bushel, if you will. And then we're just kind of looking down at it, and then can you really see the seeds? Can you see the red? Can you see the blacks? Like, are the blacks black enough? And you start looking at it, and you go, 'Okay, this is perfect.' But you can see when it starts washing out, Todd, you can see it very clearly. You can actually feel it as well. It doesn't feel like a real image at some point. And so it was pretty important to the team, especially because when you think about the nature of Kindle, you're here to represent the author's content. You're here to help the creator tell their story, or the writer, if you will. But you're also here to help the reader create images that are beautiful in their mind's eye and read and disappear into their book, or learn from their book, or use it as their spirit or their kind of their inspiration for creation. None of that can get lost because you messed up on an image, or you didn't have the fast page turn, or it just didn't represent the book the way it was meant to be represented. And that was pretty important to this team.

Okay, okay, low-key five-sentence review. What do you think? I think, I mean, I think low-key reviews is a great idea. I probably changed the last sentence. I think a lot more than 'some people will probably like it.' I think a ton of people are going to love it. I mean, love it. I handed one to my wife, and she won't hand it, she won't give it back to me. You know, I use it for testing, and so like I gave it to her a little bit early, and now I'm in trouble because I can't, you know, I got to make sure she holds on to it until we release.

They'll be super pumped. Like, I think super pumped. Yeah, I don't, like, it's emotional, Todd. I think it's emotional. It really is. And we see it, and you can see it on Kindle. People love their Kindles, love their Kindles. I mean, people love their Kindles. This just adds the next level of, like, love at the end of the day.

First, I think you've highlighted on something that's really important right now is how focus is becoming more of a need, or staying focused, if you will, not being distracted, it's another way to say it. When you have a series of these products that have a purpose, can you keep that purpose as simple as possible for people? I think we're in a day and age where that matters more than ever. Being here, being lucky enough to be part of this team with so many products, as we talked about at the beginning, you get really inspired about how is it that you can deliver that simplicity to the customers, and you have a team that's motivated to do so. I mean, I'm not sure I'm answering your question the way you want it answered, but it is inspiring for me to be here, look across so many different dimensions of technology, and then products that are being delivered to people in different ways and what they need to accomplish, you know, whether it's from security or to productivity. It's been inspiring.

It's my go-to. I can't live without it right now.

Okay, yeah, no need to prove it. I believe once you pick it up, you would love it. So it's a larger screen device, and the idea is that you're able to write and read.