Amazon Fire TV
Amazon Fire TV
Photo via Engadget.

While Amazon breathlessly touted the capabilities of its streaming-media box, Fire TV, last week, it surprisingly didn’t mention anything about how the device would link up with the company’s fundamental purpose: being the online store that sells everything to everyone. Amazon has never concealed its playbook for its Kindle family of products: price your device so far below the competition’s that consumers scoop it up and you open the floodgates to a steady stream of content sales. It’s a Trojan horse: Build a shopping cart but present it like a sweet tablet. And like the classic Trojan horse, it needed to feel like a gift. Fire TV, however, is no gift. It’s priced at the high end of the market for such devices, lacks privileged Prime pricing to draw in new members, and falls short of its potential for integrated digital commerce.

Read the full story at C|NET.

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