Amazon To Build Massive London Research Base

As Amazon gears up for its quarterly earnings later this week, the company today has announced an expansion that points to its big ambitions in digital media, and an increasing focus on how that growth will come from outside the U.S.. Amazon is opening a new R&D hub in London focused on developing services and APIs for TVs, games consoles, smartphones and PCs, with the aim to roll those out across the company’s global footprint. That is a major development for a company that has been somewhat slow to roll out its newest services beyond its U.S.-homebase.

Amazon says that the eight-floor, 47,000-square-feet space in Glasshouse Yard — not far from London’s “Silicon Roundabout” tech hub — will house software engineers, user-interface experts and graphic designers. The company owns UK streaming service and Netflix competitor LOVEFiLM as well as UK-based TV app company Pushbutton, which will both be relocated to the new center. Paula Byrne, the MD of Pushbutton, will become the MD of the new R&D operation. Although the center will be built out of Amazon’s UK holdings, what’s clear in today’s announcement is that Amazon is thinking beyond just the UK. The work, it says, will be focused on “new digital media projects that will benefit Amazon customers all over the world.”