Apple poaches Amazon Fire TV head to steward Apple TV
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Michelle Clancy
| 09 February 2017

CE giant Apple has hired a former Amazon hardware executive to focus on its Apple TV division.

Timothy D Twerdahl will take over the hardware development portion of the business, while Pete Distad, a former Hulu executive, will focus on content deals. The exec has held senior hardware roles at Motorola, Netflix, Roku and WIMM Labs before joining Amazon where he spent four years, including as Fire TV’s director and general manager.

The appointment seems well timed. Analysts at eMarketer believe that Apple TV is struggling, with just 11.3% of connected TV consumers using the gadget. It’s more expensive than its competitors ($150), lacks parallel features to the market leaders (it only supports 1080p, for one) and has no original or exclusive content associated with it.

“We have more things planned for [Apple TV], but it’s come a long way in a year, and it gives us a clear platform to build off of,” Apple www.apple.com CEO Tim Cook said last week in its earnings call.