Amazon jumped into the cord cutting world with both feet in 2014 when they brought out the Fire TV. They have been making strong inroads; however, they are still far behind the leader of the streaming set-top box market, Roku. Now with Apple jumping back into the battle for your living room TV, Amazon has even more pressure and competition.
So what should Amazon do? How can they be the number 1 living room device?
Here are just a few of our suggestions.
Take a Tip from Fire Tablets
Fire Tablets are huge sellers for Amazon and are quickly taking a huge bite out of the Android and iOS tablet market mainly because of the inexpensive price due to lock screen ads. So why not put ads on the Fire TV screen saver? I would happily pay $15 or $20 for a Fire Stick with ads. That’s a great price for a powerful little device.
At even $25 the Fire Stick would be the number 1 selling streaming device. Great line up of content and a great price together overpower any shortcomings the Fire TV has.
Update the UI and the Website
Amazon does a great job featuring their content with the Fire TV, but if you use a lot of other apps it can be frustrating. Amazon needs to make third-party apps a more featured part of the Fire TV home page.
Having apps hidden if they have not recently been used limits how useful the Fire TV is. A better app store on the Fire TV and more prominent placement will bring in more developers and help Amazon push past Roku and Apple when it comes to content. Amazon lacks in content because it does not feature it like Roku does.
If third-party developers thought their content would be featured more on the Fire TV they would make more high quality apps for the Fire TV.
Conclusion
The Fire TV is a great device, but it is lacking in the area of content. When it comes to cord cutting, content is king and the Fire TV right now is lacking a lot of apps that Roku has. Cutting the price can overcome a lot of that but making developers feel their content would stand out more will help bring in more apps.
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