The American giant is turning to "online" television with the aim of conquering the entertainment space, Amazon's Fire TV is coming.
Additionally, Fire TV offers a voice search feature that allows users to say, for example, the name of an actor or a movie category and see the results appear on the screen.
“War” in the living room
As the New York Times comments, Amazon's new attempt to conquer the living room puts it up against established players such as Netflix, which offers a popular video streaming service, Microsoft and Sony, which produce game consoles, or even cable television company Comcast, which would not want its customers to disconnect the cable.
Meanwhile, Apple says it sold about 10 million Apple TVs last year, while Google recently introduced a peripheral that plugs into a TV's HDMI port and displays content from computers, tablets, and phones.
“Because we already sell millions of [other manufacturers’] set-top boxes, we learn what works and what doesn’t,” Amazon Vice President Peter Larsen at the Fire TV launch in Manhattan. Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was absent.
Amazon, after all, is no stranger to video. It has offered a video library service for Prime subscribers since 2011 and continues to build a large catalog of TV series and movies.
The video library is offered to subscribers of the Prime service for same-day product deliveries, the price of which was recently increased from $79 to $99. Subscribers have exceeded 10 million, most of them in the US.
The Fire TV will be available in US stores "immediately." It was not specified if and when the device will arrive in Europe.
