Apple Hires Amazon's Fire TV Head To Help Boost Apple TV Business Performance
The evolution of Apple TV continues this year. And to prove the continuity of its innovation, Apple recently hired the former Amazon Fire TV head, Timothy D. Twerdahl as the vice president who is in charge of Apple TV product marketing.
According to Bloomberg Technology, Twerdahl was in charge of negotiating media content deals in Amazon. The former Amazon executive is now the new head of Apple TV business that frees up other executives to spearhead different efforts.
The decision to hire Twerdahl as their vice president suggest a renewed focus on the Apple TV by providing more content for the device. According to the reports, this effort has been stalled in the past years by failed negotiations.
A spokesman for the iPhone maker confirmed that Twerdahl joined the company this month. According to Twerdahl LinkedIn profile, he had been working as a general manager and director of Amazon's Fire TV business since 2013.
Apple TV represents a part of the company's other products and revenue category which generated more than 5 percent of the company's sales in 2016. The last hardware update was in 2015 for the set-top device. However, the sales have decreased for several years from 2015 to 2016 holiday quarter.
Apple's decision to hire Twerdahl will help Pete Distad who is the former head of Apple TV product marketing to focus on helping land content deals. Distad was the senior vice president of content distribution at Hulu before joining the company in 2013.
According to 9to5Mac, Apple TV and Fire TV are considered as the set-top devices that have the ability to stream video content and apps to large TV screens. Apple TV and Fire TV are known for their voice control functionality as well as their integration with their respective companies' more essential services.
Twerdahl possesses a lot of experience regarding internet-connected Apple TV devices. He has also been an executive at Netflix and become a vice president of consumer devices of a streaming video box developer Roku. Apple believes that Twerdahl's experience would help promote video content and living room devices in Apple TV products and when the company is finding revenue for iPhone and iPad sales.