Amazon and Best Buy have announced a collaboration to bring customers the next generation of Fire TV Edition smart TVs. In a first step in the partnership, Best Buy will launch more than ten 4K and HD Fire TV Edition models from Insignia and Toshiba starting in summer 2018.
Our goal is to enrich the lives of our customers by offering them the very best products and services, whether they come to us online, visit our stores, or invite us into their home. Our partnership with Amazon is exciting because we believe Fire TV Edition delivers an incredible user experience and further strengthens the growing connection between home theater, home automation and voice control.
– Hubert Joly, Best Buy chairman and CEO
You can find out more about the new product here.
What is doubtless most interesting about this smart TV partnership is the potential it offers for voice activated TV based shopping via Alexa on Amazon. It’s easy enough to make basic shopping requests and the like with Alexa already (as long as you’re all signed up and set up, of course) but the integration with a smart TV makes it much more interesting. Not least because the experience can become more visual. But also, it could potentially mean a shopping experience that is actually hooked up to whatever you might be watching on the box. You like that product featured in a show? Buy it with Alexa. It could be a new horizon in TV shopping.
Customers in the United States will get access to the first Fire TV Edition smart TV from Toshiba beginning in the summer and additional models to be released later in 2018. Fire TV Edition smart TVs will be available exclusively in Best Buy stores, on BestBuy.com, and for the first time, from Best Buy as a third-party seller on Amazon.com. The new Fire TV Edition smart TVs will be available for purchase in Canada later this year. And who knows, maybe they will become available in the UK and Europe in due course.
