A senior Amazon executive who worked on the Fire TV will move to Apple, becoming the vice president in charge of Apple TV product marketing, Bloomberg reported this week.
Timothy Twerdahl, the former head of Amazon's Fire TV unit, joined Apple this month, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to Amazon, he held similar roles at Netflix and Roku.
Twerdahl's move comes as the company is looking to expand its presence in the living room. The Apple TV got a significant upgrade last year, and is now powered by a revamped tvOS, an operating system whose features are more closely aligned with the rest of the Apple ecosystem.
That synergy between computers, mobile devices and entertainment boxes is something that Amazon does well, and Twerdahl's move signals that Apple will double down on that strategy as it faces competition not only from Amazon, but also increasingly from Google's Android TV, Roku, and others.
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One of the strengths of Amazon's Fire TV is its integration with the Alexa personal voice assistant, which comes built into the remote control of one model of the Fire TV Stick. Apple has integrated its own assistant, Siri, into the Apple TV, but Siri doesn't enjoy the previous living room experience that the Echo speaker has afforded Alexa.
To see how the Apple TV does in a showdown with the competition from Amazon, Google, and Roku, check out our guide to the best media streaming devices.
Apple has a history of poaching employees from competitors, especially when it comes to the company's projects outside of Macs, iPhones, and iPads. As Bloomberg notes, Twerdahl's predecessor Pete Distad, who will remain with Apple, joined the company in 2013 after heading up content distribution at Hulu.
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