Wedbush Sees Underwhelming Debut for Amazon.com's Fire TV

In a report published Thursday, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter reiterated a Neutral rating and $330.00 price target on Amazon.com AMZN. In the report, Wedbush noted, “On Wednesday, Amazon introduced the Fire TV multimedia set-top box for video, music, and gaming. Fire TV began shipping today from Amazon.com at the same $99 price point as Apple TV and Roku 3 (likely its main set-top box competition), and above the $35 price point of Google Chromecast. Fire TV includes a free remote control with a built-in microphone for Voice Search; a $39.99 game controller is optional. It has a quad-core processor with over 3x the processing power of the three competitors, 4x the memory, and a dedicated graphics processing unit. It delivers 1080p HD video and Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. For video, Fire TV features Amazon Instant Video (to rent or purchase), Prime Instant Video (unlimited viewing for Prime subscribers), and a slew of third-party apps such as Hulu Plus, Netflix, WatchESPN, and YouTube, among others. For gaming, Fire TV features content from Amazon Game Studios, Disney, EA, Gameloft, Mojang, and Take-Two, among others. Finally, for music, Fire TV features Amazon MP3, iHeartRadio, and Pandora, among others.” Amazon.com closed on Wednesday at $341.96.