Rivals Best Buy And Amazon Partner To Offer Fire TV Edition Smart TVs With Alexa Integration

by Brandon Hill — Wednesday, April 18, 2018, 10:34 AM EDT

Best Buy and Amazon are fierce rivals in the electronics market, with the former having a big presence in the brick and mortar side of things, while the latter absolutely dominates the online sector. The two companies are now joining forces to sell new Fire TV Edition smart TVs in a rather interesting arrangement.

The two companies inked a multi-year partnership that will see Best Buy as the exclusive retailer for Insignia- and Toshiba-branded Fire TV Edition smart TVs. These sets will be sold at both Best Buy's brick and mortar and online stores. In addition, the TVs will be sold via the Amazon Marketplace with Best Buy as the third-party seller. There will be nearly a dozen Fire TV Edition smart TVs from Insignia and Toshiba offered by Best Buy, in both Full HD and 4K flavors.

bezos joly amazon best buy — CEO Jeff Bezos (L) and Best Buy chairman and CEO Hubert Joly (R)

Amazon first introduced the world to Fire TV Edition smart TVs back in May 2017, when it announced a partnership with budget television maker Element. Like the smart TVs from Element, the new Insignia and Toshiba counterparts will run Amazon’s FireOS and will have full Alexa integration (courtesy of an Alexa voice remote). Built-in apps will give you access to popular services including Prime Video (of course), Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and PlayStation Vue (among others).

“Amazon and Best Buy have a long history of working together, and today we take our partnership to a new level,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “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," added Best Buy chairman and CEO Hubert Joly.

Neither company is providing any additional details on model specifics of pricing, but we do know that the first Fire TV Edition smart TVs will be available this summer in the United States. Retail availability will extend to Canada "later this year".

Tags: Amazon, Best Buy, (NASDAQ:AMZN), FireOS, Fire TV, (nasdaq:bby), alexa, fire tv edition

Brandon Hill

Brandon received his first PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. He cut his teeth on computer building/repair working at a mom and pop computer shop as a plucky teen in the mid 90s and went on to join AnandTech as the Senior News Editor in 1999. Brandon would later help to form DailyTech where he served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008 until 2014. Brandon is a tech geek at heart, and family members always know where to turn when they need free tech support. When he isn’t writing about the tech hardware or studying up on the latest in mobile gadgets, you’ll find him browsing forums that cater to his long-running passion: automobiles.

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