Is Amazon giving up on smartphones after Fire flop?

Now, the company is cutting back on those efforts by laying off employees from its Silicon Valley-based Lab126, a secretive wing of the online retailer that focuses on developing hardware devices.

Evidently, Amazon is trying to clear up its Fire Phone inventory in an attempt to put all the fiasco behind it. What’s more, the Wall Street Journal reports that the retail giant is dead set on reshaping things while its mobile division is concerned.

The long-awaited Fire phone made its debut in 2014, going on sale for $200 with a two-year contract exclusively available from AT&T. After 11 years of pushing consumer products, Lab126 has halted ambitious projects that included a large-screen tablet and a stripped-down Fire smartphone, without the 3D screen and eye-tracking cameras. In the meantime, the company has reportedly laid off dozens of engineers that worked on the first Fire Phone.

Some workers say Lab126’s shifting and, at times, enigmatic priorities, including a planned high-end computer for the kitchen, have contributed to a frenetic workplace and ill-defined roles.

News about the lay-offs has been muted by Amazon’s practice of requiring staff to sign non-disclosure agreements in return for severance payments. The company clearly hasn’t given up on non-Kindle hardware altogether, in other words. The device, which featured facial-recognition features that didn’t quite have any real purposes, failed to wow consumers and never sold well.

Lab126 was founded in 2004 and developed the Kindle e-reader, which was launched in 2007 and which remains the unit’s biggest success to date.

The Verge reported that Amazon will stop or slow projects including a 14in tablet codenamed Project Cairo, a projector codenamed Shimmer and a “smart stylus” dubbed Nitro that converts handwriting into digital shopping lists.