Amazon Planning on Going Toe To Toe with Roku
Watching their number one competitor Roku, killing it with their cash cow free ad-supported channel, now we hear Amazon has plans on doing the same thing for Fire TV owners
Roku saw the writing on the wall that building and selling media streamers alone was not going to make them profitable. So they built a very popular content channel named "The Roku Channel" which viewers can watch free from which they can sell ads.
Now Amazon has plans of also offering their huge base of customers on Fire TV their own such channel. Amazon has been trying very hard to dominate media streamer sales with their Fire TV and wrangle away the number one watched medals streamer title away from Roku.
This is not the first time they have followed Roku's lead. After Roku forged partnerships with several TV manufacturers to include their software inside their TV sets powering the "Smart Function." Recently Amazon also came out with a Fire TV "Smart TV" and a house brand that will be featured and sold in Best Buy Stores.
It's also been reported that Amazon is now also working on a DVR that will work with their Fire TV media streamers.
They must have taken notice of the widespread use and acceptance of Roku's free channel especially now that it is available from a web browser and you don't even need a Roku to watch it.
Today we learned from LightReading that Amazon also plans on releasing their own ad-supported channel or app for Fire TV devices. This channel will contain mostly older content that will be Free unless you count the cost of your time to watch the ads.
This gives Amazon another alternative to their paid annual membership Prime Video Service which is said to have over 100 million subscribers. Apple is said to be also working on a content channel of their own, yet we have little details if it will be free and ad-supported or another paid TV service.
The streaming war is still going full force as now the big players fighting for your entertainment dollars are Google, Roku Amazon, and Apple.
This new channel may put a dent in the amount of hours streamed on other popular ad-based channels like Pluto TV, Tubi TV, and Sony Crackle.
This latest news of Amazon has caused Roku stock share prices to fall a few percentage points today as this is aimed squarely at taking away more viewers from Roku.
Amazon sales of their media streamers may be off the charts and may even be outselling Roku media streamers now. Yet Roku is killing it on the number of hours streamed.
Amazon has yet to release numbers of hours streamed on their platform as those numbers would tell a different story.
Roku has been very progressive at stamping out piracy on their platform. Amazon, on the other hand, has turned a blind eye to it in many respects.
Granted, they have made some feeble attempts but nothing near as much as Roku which went as far as eliminating and removing all IPTV channels completely from their platform even though the channels hosted no illegal content of their own. Amazon did recently block IPTV apps from their App Store but these and others can still be easily side-loaded to provide pirated content on a Fire TV.
It's widely known in streaming TV circles that a large amount of sales of Amazon's Fire TV Sticks are being sold to those who want a cheap media streamer for watching Free TV. When these devices are being used to watch pirated content they are not watching ad supported content, or purchasing videos that can help contribute to Amazon's bottom line.
While the Amazon ad-supported video channel sounds great in theory, it makes one wonder how many Fire TV owners will simply choose to watch this content vs Prime video or watch newer free content from less than legal sources which contains no ads at all.
- Don't miss these Top 10 movies and TV shows on Amazon Video.
- For many more Free Channels on Roku check out this list.
- Pluto TV is another great FREE channel that has a Live TV format.
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Use of third-party trademarks on this site is not intended to imply endorsement nor affiliation with respective trademark owners.
We are Not Affiliated with or Endorsed by Roku®, Apple, Google or Other Companies we may write about.
