Best Buy, Amazon join forces on TVs

BELLEVUE, WASH. — Amazon has built its brand as a digital marketplace, but it’s increasingly clear that it also needs a big physical presence to sell the devices that will further knit customers into the Amazon ecosystem.

A deal announced Wednesday that Best Buy will exclusively sell Amazon Fire-edition smart televisions suggests that it can no longer achieve the scale it wants without access to more brick and mortar. In a rare sit-down meeting with a small group of reporters on Tuesday, Amazon CEO

Jeff Bezos made the announcement together with Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly.

This summer, Best Buy will begin selling more than 10 4K and HD Fire TV Edition televisions models from Insignia, Best Buy’s in-house brand, and Toshiba.

The TVs will have Amazon Fire TV built in, allowing users to search for and watch broadcast TV, or choose from a catalogue of streaming TV episodes and movies from Netflix, Prime Video, HBO, PlayStation Vue, Hulu, and other streaming sites.

The TVs will also include a voice-activated remote with Alexa, Amazon’s voice-enabled assistant, and are set up to pair with any Echo device, allowing users to issue commands to their television via their Echo.

Bezos and Joly made their announcement in a small room designed for demonstrating television sound systems at the back of a Best Buy in Bellevue, Wash. The Amazon CEO said he was excited by the possibilities because a Fire TV-enabled television gives consumers the convenience and simplicity they want in the increasingly important smart TV segment.

“The data is that it’s growing something like 70 per cent yearover-year, so it’s also a natural place for us to partner together because it’s something customers are very interested in,” Bezos said.

The Fire TV Edition smart TVs will be available exclusively in Best Buy stores and on BestBuy.com. In a first, they will also be sold on Amazon, with Best Buy acting as a third-party seller on the site.

Best Buy and Amazon have a long history that goes back to the Kindle reader.

Today, about 700 Best Buy stores feature an Alexa showcase table where shoppers can see how Alexa works, especially with smart home products, said Joly.

“What’s new in this partnership is the depths of the physical integration between the software and the hardware, between the two companies working together — specifically the two companies are retailers, but they’re also product companies.”