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Amazon enters the commercial hardware business

Of course they have Fire and Kindle but this is the first time I know of that they are putting their own chips in devices they are selling.
 
Another systems company powerhouse in the making. In fact, they bought their way into the chip business like Apple and others:

Jan 2015: Amazon to Acquire Israeli Chip Maker Annapurna Labs: Deal at $350 Million

The Alpine product line provides a complete portfolio of solutions for home gateway, Wi-Fi Router, and Network Attached Storage (NAS). We enable OEMs and service providers to deliver multimedia, storage, security, data security, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud integration, and other services for the connected home.

Fabless chip companies take note, system level is where the margins are.......
 
Terrify? Not so sure - from a distance a cloud is a cloud is a cloud, but transaction dominated clouds are still a strong area for Intel. That said, owning 97% of the market in anything can't be a comfortable position. The only way to go is down..
 
Vertical integration is certainly a well-played route to becoming a systems company, I recall at Wang Labs back in the 1980's how they started to design their own ICs and even start a fab in Massachusetts only to miss the PC wave and eventually have to exit the hardware business all together.
 
It would be a bit scary if there were actually Amazon parts in the AWS infrastructure, but this sounds like an edge and gateway (home hub) play.

There does seem to be a vertical integration trend developing: Samsung, Huawei, now Amazon. I was the guy who liked the Fire Phone simply because of its tight integration with the Amazon shopping scheme, but outside of the developer API it was otherwise poorly executed and not very competitive.

Any of these parts spotted in the wild? Amazon devices? Non-Amazon devices? I didn't find much past one Netgear router on a quick search. Not even the Amazon Fire TV Stick.

https://developer.amazon.com/public...re-tv/docs/device-and-platform-specifications
 
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