Amazon has announced the opening of its first-ever hair salon, which will be located in Spitalfields, London. Pitched as a high-tech take on traditional hair salons, this two-storey styling shop will be packed with augmented reality technology that allows customers to see how they would look with different hair colours and styles. Haircuts and treatments will be performed by trained hairdressers. Amazon Salon will also feature “point-and-learn” technology, which enables visitors to point at any product available via Amazon and learn more about it via a screen. QR codes will then be available for customers to buy those products through Amazon, which recently launched a professional beauty section.

Currently Amazon’s new salon is only open to Amazon employees, but a booking system will be made available to the public in the coming weeks. As it appears there is no industry that the e-commerce behemoth won’t enter, what else does the company have on the horizon? Click or scroll through to discover what Amazon plans to do next.

In January 2018, Amazon opened its first cashier-less convenience store, called Amazon Go, in its birthplace of Seattle. The stores could completely revolutionise shopping as we know it, as the “Just Walk Out” stores mean that you don't need to queue for a cashier; instead you just pick up your purchases and leave. A step beyond self-serve checkouts, the Amazon Go stores are fitted with weight sensors and cameras, so that you can add items to your virtual cart in the Amazon Go app by just picking them off the shelves.

There are now 26 checkout-free Amazon Go stores across the US in several major cities, including Chicago and San Francisco, and opened its first London store in March this year. A further 30 UK stores are in the pipeline. Amazon also opened a 10,400-square-foot (966-square-metre) Amazon Go supermarket in Seattle in February 2020. The incredible “Just Walk Out” technology will soon be available for other retailers to buy, with several big names already in line to incorporate it in their own stores. Many suspect Whole Foods will be the first to adopt the approach after Amazon bought the grocer in 2017, with rumours suggesting the technology could be integrated into its stores as early as this year. 

In September 2020, Amazon launched a new biometric payment method to be implemented in its Amazon Go stores. A new form of contactless payment, the system will take a scan of each customer’s palm, which will then be linked to their credit or debit card. Because of the intricacy of the vein patterns that will be catalogued, biometric payment is highly resistant to forgery, in theory making it a much safer method than cards or cash. Once registered, shoppers will be able to pay just using their hand which, like a contactless card, will need to hover over the scanner for a second or two before payment is complete. 

Amazon seems to have a finger in every pie, and recent announcements show that the company is keen to target two new markets: fresh food and luxury goods. Amazon Fresh has provided grocery deliveries since 2007, but only in mid-September 2020 did its first bricks-and-mortar store open to the public. The supermarkets feature the smart shopping carts found in the Go stores, while promising consistently low-priced goods. At the other end of the spectrum is Luxury Stores, Amazon’s first foray into the world of designer products. High-end brands will be able to sell their wares through the Amazon website like other vendors, but will be given more control over factors such as inventory and pricing. The company has also enabled interactive, 360-degree views of products, so that shoppers can better visualise the quality of the on-screen items. Oscar de la Renta was the first luxury label to have partnered with Amazon in September, but others are yet to be announced.

Amazon is a global company, and taking over India seems to be at the forefront of its plans. Before he stepped down from the CEO role in February this year, Jeff Bezos visited the country earlier in 2020 (pictured) and, speaking at an Amazon event, he was quoted as saying the 21st century is “going to be the Indian century”. 

Bezos certainly put money where his mouth was, and Amazon went on to pledge a whopping $1 billion (£800m) investment towards digitising small- and medium-sized businesses across India, enabling them to trade online. However, not everyone welcomes this investment, and some locals are opposing the move as it could damage their bricks-and-mortar businesses. Bezos also announced that Amazon would be exporting $10 billion (£8bn)-worth of India-made goods by 2025, as the company looks to secure a firm position in the country’s retail market. Financial technology is also on Amazon's Indian agenda, as the company has made a big push in expanding its offerings in the country, including a credit card, car insurance, and gold investment products, which were introduced in August last year. 

Given Amazon’s reputation for speedy delivery and its growing ventures in groceries, it’s perhaps unsurprising that a takeaway food delivery service called Amazon Food was trialled in India last year. Just as the pandemic lockdown set in, Amazon decided to make the most of everyone being stuck indoors and launched its delivery service ahead of schedule in four parts of Bengaluru. Around 100 restaurants were initially involved in the trial, which started in May last year, and local competitors Zomato and Swiggy had to compete with their new rival. It seems like it's gone well as this March Amazon Food started to expand in India, and it now works with 2,500 restaurants, serving 62 pin codes across Bengaluru.

This isn’t the company’s first enterprise in food delivery, as it ran a similar service called Amazon Restaurants across parts of the US and London for four years, before operations closed down in 2018. It may not have gone as well as hoped, but the recent trial and expansion in India shows that Amazon is still keen to get a foothold in the industry. An investment in Deliveroo, one of the UK’s largest food delivery services, was finally approved in April 2020, after Amazon's $575 million (£460m) investment was initially blocked by regulators in 2019 on the grounds of limiting competition. Deliveroo went public on 31 March this year, taking the title of the "worst IPO in London's history", and shares closed 26% down, wiping £2 billion ($2.7bn) of the company's opening value of £7.6 billion ($10.5bn). This will have had an effect on the value of Amazon's 16% share in the business.

In 2018, reports claimed that the store would be opening in 2020, featuring delivery drones, robot kiosks and few human staff, making it the most technologically-advanced shopping space in the world. However, the cashier-free store only opened its doors at the end of March this year. The 12-storey, 89,100 square metre shopping space is the largest in the city and is home to brands such as Gucci, Prada and Fendi.

In April 2018, Bloomberg revealed that Amazon is working on a project that could really shake things up: a next-generation smart robot for the home that will be powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Named Vesta, after the Roman goddess of home and family, this robot (not pictured) will help around the house with cleaning and other chores, making everyday home life just that little bit easier.

Domestic robots are nothing new, but Vesta is expected to boast the latest cameras, sensors and other futuristic technologies, and may be able to do everything from simple household chores to complex problem-solving, as well as providing companionship. Many expected to see Amazon’s new project for the first time at a press event in September 2019, but a no-show suggested that the tech giant could be having difficulties. This year leaked documents seen and reported on by Business Insider reveal that Amazon has more than 800 workers focusing on the home robot project, as production delays and slow development has seen the project stall. 

The number of devices Alexa works with has reached 100,000 as of July 2020. Hundreds of millions of Alexa devices have been sold worldwide and more are coming. As well as speakers, laptops, microwaves and other gadgets for the home, Alexa is also finding her way into offices, hotels, smart glasses and, more recently, cars. Amazon faces stiff competition from Google (Google Assistant) and Apple (Siri), which is why this next move for Alexa could prove to be the big game-changer...

Despite its name, Alexa still lacks the human touch, which is Amazon’s next goal. The company wants to make interactions more natural, for example not having to start each request with the wake word “Alexa”, but rather it responding to queries such as “Can you turn the lights on, Alexa?”, and noises like a dog barking or a baby crying. Alexa Care Hub was launched last November, which allows an elderly person’s device to be paired with a family member’s, so people can keep in touch easily with vulnerable relatives. This will eventually provide useful data in terms of making Alexa a companion that could one day help to tackle health problems in its users, but it has raised questions about how deeply we want this kind of tech integrated into our lives… 

Another industry the tech giant is keen to make waves in is gaming. Amazon launched Luna, a cloud gaming service that allows users to play on streaming devices without having to download or install games beforehand, for a group of early access invite-only users in October 2020. Luna will work on any Bluetooth controller, but Amazon has also released its own Luna version (pictured), which will connect directly to the cloud service. The games players can access depends on which channels they subscribe to, with the base channel Luna Plus costing $5.99 a month for its early access users. There is no fixed release date for Luna, but keen gamers can already sign up for early access in the US. 

Amazon has been supplying hospitals for years now, but it intends to take the medical side of its business to the next level. Amazon Care launched in September 2019 as a pilot for Seattle-based Amazon employees and their families. So far it has proven successful enough that Amazon is starting to scale up the service to cater for more workers. The service provides virtual and real-life healthcare assistance through Oasis Medical, including in-app visits to a doctor, in-person check-ups and prescriptions delivered within two hours.

In 2019 plans became more concrete as a lawsuit revealed Amazon’s intentions to sell drugs directly to employers and health plans. This would allow Amazon to become its own pharmacy benefit manager – an administrator of prescription drug programmes – which could really disrupt the $311 billion (£250bn) American pharmacy market. Amazon is also getting into America's $345.7 billion (£276.6bn) prescription drugs market, a move that should further lower healthcare costs across America. In June 2018, the company snapped up online pharmacy PillPack, enabling it to dispense prescriptions in 50 states, something that would have taken years to achieve otherwise.

Now find out how America's healthcare system compares to those around the world

Amazon’s most recent tech-meets-health invention is Halo, a new wearable device looking to disrupt the fitness tracker market currently dominated by the likes of Fitbit and Apple. Similar to its rivals, Halo monitors sleep and activity levels, but can also monitor the wearer’s body composition. Another unique feature is that it tracks the tone of your voice to get a sense of your mood and energy levels. Halo's design really makes it stand out from its rivals as it is a waterproof fabric band without a screen, so can only be operated through an app. This new tracker was made available for early access customers in August 2020 and fully released in the US in December, but a wider release date to other countries is not yet known.

Amazon is always looking to improve on its service, but until 2018 it wasn’t delivering its own parcels and relied on third-party postal services such as FedEx. But the gradual introduction of Amazon’s own vans (up to 30,000 at the end of 2019) has led to an expansion of same-day delivery options and gives customers the chance to return products directly to the driver for them to be taken back to Amazon. And Amazon isn't stopping at its own branded vans...

Amazon is now looking to make its delivery service more environmentally friendly. In 2019, Amazon released its Climate Pledge, which is a commitment to be net zero carbon across the board by 2040 – 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. The company has also ordered 100,000 electric vans from startup Rivian in a $5 billion (£4bn) move to neutralise its carbon emissions, while adding in state-of-the-art features such as an advanced driver-assist system and sensing equipment. The first of the eco-friendly vans was revealed in late 2020, with 10,000 scheduled to be in operation by 2022, and all 100,000 on the road by 2030. 

While Amazon hasn't revealed any plans to incorporate driverless technology into its future delivery vehicles, the company's investments suggest that might be the plan. In June 2020, Amazon announced it was acquiring autonomous vehicle company Zoox, which has been developing driverless cars since 2014, for $1.3 billion (£998m). Zoox is known for building its vehicles from scratch, rather than from traditional cars, and it plans a vehicle that can drive backwards and forwards without turning. This isn't Amazon's first venture into driverless tech, as the company has previously invested in companies such as self-driving car start-up Aurora in 2019, and driverless trucks by Embark were spotted carrying Amazon wares on the I-10 Interstate highway in the US in January 2019. Things may move fast for its latest acquisition, as Zoox was granted a permit to test driverless cars without a back-up driver in California in September last year. 

The smallest addition to the Amazon delivery fleet is Scout, a drinks cooler-sized robot on wheels that navigates pavements at walking pace and drops off small parcels around the neighbourhood. Six Amazon Scout robots were trialled on the streets of Washington State’s Snohomish County in January 2019 – initially with a human chaperone – and they have since started making deliveries in Southern California, Georgia, and Tennessee, with UK-based road trials underway and field tests in four US states where the robots are already delivering parcels to customers.

Amazon isn’t just taking over the roads when it comes to delivering our packages. There's been a lot of hype about the Amazon Prime Air drone delivery service since December 2013, when founder Jeff Bezos mentioned the firm's plans to develop the concept during a US TV interview. Amazon is now well on the way to rolling out the service, which will deliver packages weighing up to five pounds within just 30 minutes using miniature drones. In December 2016, the first Prime Air package was delivered at breakneck speed in a testing ground in Cambridge, England, which has a Prime Air fulfilment hub nearby.

There's a very good reason Amazon Prime Air is being developed in the UK rather than the US – the service is poised to launch in Britain first. Britain's National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS) relaxed the rule that all drones must be within a pilot’s line of vision, allowing for Amazon's testing early on, while the Federal Aviation Administration in the US has only recently given the same approval. The drone delivery service was due to get going at the end of 2019 in the UK, but this was then postponed to summer 2020. But today, an official launch date is still not set, and some have accused Amazon of using the promise of drones as a means of drawing in new Prime customers. Amazon also has competition, as Walmart has recently signed a number of deals with drone companies to facilitate a similar delivery service from its stores.

Drones aren’t just for outdoor use. In September 2020, Amazon announced a plethora of exciting new tech developments, including a home security drone that would patrol the house when it’s empty. The Ring Always Home Cam is a flying upgrade to the Indoor Cams already manufactured by Ring, which was acquired by Amazon in 2018. The levitating security guard flies a route of the user’s choosing around the house, allowing continual home surveillance that links to your smartphone. The device will be available for purchase in 2021 and will cost $249.99 in the US.

Also taking to the skies is Amazon Air. Since 2016, the company has been building up a fleet of planes for its delivery efforts. The company leased 15 Boeing 737-800s in the summer of 2019, which brought its fleet to a total of 65 Prime airplanes ready to drop off goods. However, expansion is always on the horizon with Amazon, and last summer 12 new cargo planes were added to the Amazon Air fleet, bringing the total number up to more than 80 at that time, as the company tried to keep up with demand. This was a stark contrast to what is happening to most of the aviation industry as it struggles to survive the coronavirus pandemic. In January this year Amazon revealed that it has bought 11 aircraft from Delta and WestJet as it continues to expand; the planes will join its network in 2021 and 2022.

Amazon continues to grow, and more and more warehouses – known as “fulfilment centres” – are being created to meet demand. There are currently more than 175 fulfilment centres, most of which are in North America and across Europe. The centres use some of the most sophisticated tech around, including robots that organise shelves of goods and artificial intelligence-based stock taking. Australia's fourth fulfilment centre in Brisbane was up and running in time for Christmas 2020, increasing Amazon’s presence in the southern hemisphere. Others are under construction in Parma, Italy; Alberta, Canada; and Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho, Georgia, Arkansas, Delaware and Mississippi in the US. 

Facts you probably didn't know about Amazon

Until now, Amazon’s fulfilment centres have always been huge warehouses ranging between 400,000 and 1 million square feet (37,161-92,903 square metres) in size, which is the equivalent of 14 football pitches. But the e-commerce giant will soon open 1,000 smaller fulfilment centres in suburban neighbourhoods across the US as it looks to increase its same-day delivery capacity, bringing it in direct competition with big names offering similar services such as Walmart. In fact, Amazon is now converting shopping malls shut down due to the pandemic into distribution centres. In March Amazon won approval to convert disused malls in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Knoxville, Tennessee into centres. But it's not a new concept for Amazon, and between 2016 and 2019 it converted 25 shopping malls into distribution centres.

Centres create thousands of jobs for locals, and that’s set to be the case for some time as Amazon officials have recently dismissed the idea of fully-automated centres, saying that the company doesn't yet have the technology required for such a feat. But given the enormous progress Amazon has made in a little over 25 years, worker-less fulfilment centres in the future can’t be entirely ruled out.

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