Amazon Says It Has Sold More Than 150 Million Fire TV Devices

Amazon is touting a major milestone for Fire TV, claiming it has sold more than 150 million of the streaming devices worldwide. And it announced deals with Ford Motor Co and Stellantis to bring Fire TV to the automakers' in-car entertainment systems. From a report: For comparison, Roku reported 56.4 million active streaming accounts across its family of devices as of the end of the third quarter of 2021 -- although that's a different metric than total devices sold. At the end of 2020, Amazon last reported having more than 50 million active Fire TV accounts. Amazon touted momentum for its connected-TV push, calling out the introduction last fall of the first Amazon-built TVs -- the Amazon Omni and 4-Series -- and a new, more powerful version of the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. According to the ecommerce giant, Fire TV Stick ranked as the top selling product on Amazon on Black Friday among all Amazon products, and customers purchased a record number of Fire TV smart TVs on Amazon.com the week of Black Friday, including models from Insignia, Toshiba, and Pioneer and the Amazon Fire TV Omni and 4-Series.

Apples and Oranges...

[Jhon]

Fire TV's "150 million of the streaming devices worldwide" vs Roku's "56.4 million active streaming accounts"

My house has 4 fire TV devices (1 in bedroom, 1 in guest room, 2 in livingroom (attached to the same TV -- one mine, one wife+kids -- they kept loosing the remote so I bought another one JUST for me).

All the same account.

Also, I've upgraded/retired 3 over the years since it was released. That's 7 just for our household.

I'd be surprised if the "accounts" number aren't a lot closer than the "amazon streaming devices" vs "roku accounts" number.

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

You are right. And counting streaming accounts doesn't help, because of how Amazon bundles Prime with their free shipping service.

Re:Apples and Oranges... [Let Amazon decide for U]

[shanen]

Interesting FP, though I'm unclear where you're going with it. My main reaction was along the lines of "So how well does Amazon know you? And each member of your family? And how much of that knowledge about you and yours is being used to manipulate y'all into buying more stuff from Amazon?"

I'm still hung up on the freedom thing, but these days I feel more and more out of touch with modern style. Being free takes too much work. For most people it's just much easier to relax and let Amazon decide what they need to buy (or watch), when, and how much. Look how much money they save! Look at Amazon's profits. (And do NOT look at any of the victims, such as the folks who still want to think for themselves and make their own decisions and the honest salespeople who have been cut out of the loop.)

I suppose the funny part is that from a purely economic perspective it is easy to justify. Why pay for a glorified warehouse where customers can be manipulated by such factors as the placement of the displays? Amazon does all of the customer manipulation online and the products are shipped as efficiently as possible. More profit! Real competition and the implicit freedom are just so darned inefficient!

Hmm... That gave me a new way to think about the manipulation. In a real store most of the merchandise is side-by-side with competing options. But in a list of search results, there is always one result at the top of the list. If Amazon was actually driven by the best interests of the customers, then it would make good sense for Amazon to use all of the personal information to make sure each customer really did see the best choice at the top. However Amazon is driven by the objective of maximizing Amazon's profits (and the share prices with the biggest share being Jeff's), so whenever the options are close enough, then Amazon wants the tie break to go to the option that produces the larger profit for Amazon...

Disclaimer needed: My second and final Amazon purchase was 20 years ago. I recognized where Bezos was going and I decided not to go along. Nothing I've seen since then has changed my conclusion.

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

For most people it's just much easier to relax and let Amazon decide what they need to buy (or watch), when, and how much.

You should probably read Qualityland, by Marc-Uwe Kling. It's now available (from Amazon, if you like) in English, or if you read German, perhaps it's better to read the original. It's a couple of years old now, but sort of centers in that idea, and it's for sure the funniest thing I've ever read in German. My wife loved it too, it isn't super nerdish.

Re:

[shanen]

Thanks for the reference, though I'm not sure I need any more depressing data. I read at least three relevant books last month. But let me see if it's available locally (and absolutely "no thank you" to the Amazon purchase).

Sorry, all the local copies are in Japanese and I don't read German, either. (Actually, I could read the Japanese version, but it would take me a LONG time and I'm sure I wouldn't capture any subtleties in it. I might get more nuance from the German?) But most of the serious books on the

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

You can read Japanese? Cool! Though this book being originally German, the English translation would likely be closer to the original without having to guess what got lost (or gained) in translation. Anyway, it's light reading, I doubt anyone who read it got (more) depressed by it...

Re:

[shanen]

"Sort of" is the kindest way to put it. I certainly do not get into the author's mental state of mind, and I count myself lucky if I get more than 50% while reading at 1/10th of normal speed. Far and away the toughest language I've ever studied. In contrast, I think a lot of the mental models are shared between English and German... (But I mostly wish someone would create a certain kind of (multilingual) literacy-development app to help everyone learn to read better.)

Back to the topic of the original story.

Re:

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Re:

[thecombatwombat]

I suspect this is how marketing goes. And hey, good for /. for carrying it for free. It's about time that plucky startup totally not a monopolist Amazon catches a break.

When the accounts number looked good last year, they released that.

When it looks (relatively) less good this year, they tout "total devices sold" instead.

Getting hacked and used for cheap cable TV

[blitzrage]

I know several people who have bought Fire sticks in the last year simply to have them hacked and pay a cheap monthly fee to someone so they can get cheap cable TV. Most of them aren't using them for legal streaming methods, just using it to drop the several different paid services to save $200+ a month.

Re:

[ThurstonMoore]

I came here to say the same thing. The vast majority of these devices are being hacked to pirate television. I know tons of people who bought hacked fire sticks on ebay.

No Thanks Amazon

[JKanoock]

Wow, no thank you to having Fire TV in my car. I would stay as far away from any Amazon products as possible, they have shown over and over they are not to be trusted. I know, I know they all do it but Amazon is particularly filthy to me.

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

I was looking to replace my older 720p TV with a 1080p model, but my local BestBuy had 4K TVs on sale which made them cheaper than 1080p models. I had a choice between two similar models at the same price. The main difference was one was powered by Roku and the other was powered by Fire. I had not used either before so I did not know the differences. In retrospect, it seemed like picking the Roku was the better option.

Re:

[demonlapin]

Given that I never put a TV directly on my network, I'm very indifferent to what the underlying OS is. I run it all via an Apple TV, which isn't a ton better, but my wife can figure out how to work it, and at least it's not subsidizing Samsung or TCL as well as Apple.

If some of these actually catch on fire,

[Tablizer]

Amazon's naming department will be on the hot seat.

Active of collecting dust

[Monoman]

How many are active? I have a Fire Stick collecting dust because:

1 - I don't like the Fire GUI
2 - The Fire Stick is too slow

Those two factors combined make for a craptastic experience. Most folks I know use Roku, Apple, Nvidia, or their "Smart TV". Only a few seem to like and keep their Fire devices.

Re: Active of collecting dust

[drinkypoo]

I have an old fire TV stick and Amazon ruined it with "updates" that increase memory usage. Now it is literally unusable. So I bought an nvidia shield, which is an open platform (with OSS drivers no less.) Fuck Amazon, I will never buy another fire device because they will only fuck it up.

Re:

[demonlapin]

I have a Fire TV Stick 4K. It sits in my charger bag. When I want to watch Netflix while on a trip, out it comes. I've had it for a year or more and it probably has ten to twenty hours of video use, but it was $25. Call it cheap insurance for a bad hotel TV experience. Plus, if I ever feel motivated, I can hack it.

Fire TV main screen has ads

[acz]

We've tried the Fire TV at a friend and we weren't impressed. The user interface was ugly and laggy compared to the AppleTV..

The worst part was the main screen:

1. Row of Apps
2. Row of Ads for apps
3. Apps...

£$%& this

Soundbar with built-in FireTV

[PetiePooo]

Don't bother with the Nebula brand soundbar that has FireTV built-in unless that will be the only device you use for a TV. It's supposed to work as a vanilla soundbar accepting audio via ARC. It doesn't. Well.. it does but it keeps switching to FireTV mode where it sends video and no longer receives ARC. I returned mine, but I'm sure I'm included as one of the 150 million anyway.

Kodi!

[gti_guy]

One of the reasons Amazon Fire devices are popular is because they are amazing inexpensive devices to run Kodi on. The price/performance/availability combo is hard to beat.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

My Fire TV stick was a great place to run Kodi until they made it unusable with background activity. It started choking all the time. So I bought a Shield (cylinder one) and THAT is actually a genuinely great place to run Kodi.

I saved my money

[AndyKron]

Good for all those people. I saved my money.

I bought 3 of them in series in order to keep thin

[Kevoco]

FireTV sticks update their hardware and so, unless you like sitting there waiting 3 to 7 seconds for an older Fire TV stick to react to you having used the remote, you too will buy a newer one every couple years!

At least during the holidays, they are subsidized.

[waspleg]

I got 2 Firestick 4K Max sticks for $35 each (40 with tax) because Samsung decided they were going to stop renewing SSL certs and try to force me in to buying new TVs. Guess again. The UI is fast as fuck by comparison.

Firesticks, while boot locked like Kindle and other such shit, can at least still side load applications, among other things, [firesticktricks.com] and these have ax interfaces (wifi 6) which are way the fuck nicer than the 5 year old TV's were-always-bad ac wifi interfaces.

They're back at ~$60 pre-tax now, I sti

Fluffed?

[dr_leviathan]

I received a Fire Stick in the mail before Christmas but did not order it, it wasn't in my Amazon order history, and AFAICT it wasn't a gift from a friend. I asked Amazon WTF? and they just said: "If you received the item in error you can keep it. You will not be charged for something you didn't order." Perhaps Amazon was just dumping extra stock into their delivery system so they could announce the "150M Sold!" headline. The headline, after all, is worth something to marketing and PR. The price of a gu

Is thisâ¦

[Ronin Developer]

What the call a âoeFireâ sale?

Just wondering.

Sorry but I love my Roku

[Anonymous Coward]

We have 4 Rokus.

Re:

[burbigo1]

It's slow, it's rough, but it's a pretty great and versatile little device, especially for the price. In short, the good sales figures are deserved ! https://www.minimilitia.mobi/ [minimilitia.mobi] https://www.applock.ooo/ [applock.ooo]