Amazon.com (AMZN) on Wednesday unveiled its long-awaited set-top box for streaming Internet video and music and playing casual games, joining a crowded market. The e-commerce giant boasted that its $99 Amazon Fire TV has more horsepower and capabilities than rival devices from Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Roku and others. Amazon says Fire TV has three times the processing power of Apple TV, Google Chromecast or Roku 3, and four times the memory.
Amazon.com (AMZN) has set its sights on the living room with its latest consumer electronics gadget, a set-top box that streams Internet video and also plays games. It joins a crowded market with similar devices from Apple (AAPL), Roku, Google (GOOG) and others. Amazon introduced its long-awaited set-top box, called Amazon Fire TV, at a media event in New York City on Wednesday. The $99 device is available for order on Amazon.com. It joins joins Amazon’s Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets in the company’s homegrown product lineup. With Fire TV, users can access Amazon Prime Instant Video, as well as Netflix (NFLX), Hulu and other third-party video services. Plus, users can rent new release movies from Amazon. Among the innovative features of the device is speech-recognition technology for searching for programs to watch. Voice search is built into the Fire TV remote control. “Tiny box, huge specs, tons of…
Not since the Rolling Stones first sang “Get Off Of My Cloud” have people been so protective of their clouds. Of course, today those clouds are of the Internet computing variety. On Monday afternoon, Microsoft (MSFT) slashed prices for its Azure cloud computing services to keep pace with price cuts last week by rivals Amazon.com (AMZN) and Google (GOOG). Microsoft’s price changes will take effect on May 1. “Consistent with our previously announced commitment to match Amazon (AMZN) on prices for commodity services, we are cutting prices on compute by up to 35% and storage by up to 65%,” Steven Martin, general manager for Microsoft (MSFT) Azure, said in a blog post. “We recognize that economics are a primary driver for some customers adopting cloud, and stand by our commitment to match prices and be best-in-class on price performance.” Price is one of three factors buyers of information technology should consider, Martin says…