Have you ever wondered why Fire TV sticks were so cheap? Considering what a solid device it is to use and its versatility, Amazon could probably sell it for more money. The answer is that it is not really designed to make money. The Fire TV line of products for the most part, is there to get people to buy into Amazon Prime. Anybody who has one has probably noticed that part of the setup process encourages the user to either sign into Prime or sign up for a free trial. And trust me, they know that a lot of people will forget to opt out or decide that they like it enough to keep it. Unlike Netflix, Prime is not just a video service. The convenience of ordering products online and having them delivered to your door is the real draw. Unless you somehow have your life set up so that you never have to buy anything and have plenty of time to head to the store in the rare case that you do need something.
The Prime video options of course, populate most of the home page of the Fire TV though, and you will constantly be made aware of what you may be missing without a subscription. See the Boys! Don’t miss Reacher! Amazon also makes money from people subscribing to services through its Amazon Channels or even the app store.
Guess what it does not make money on? Amazon does not make money when people buy a Fire Stick and “unlock” it. Amazon does not make money when users install downloader and install Unlinked or Cyberflix or any of the many programs pushed on YouTube as must-have apps for Fire Sticks. They also do not make money when people download alternative launchers.
That is why it will not impact Amazon’s business when the company begins to release Fire TV products with its new Linux-based operating system replacing Android as the backbone of the experience. You will certainly hear things like “Amazon is going to lose a lot of customers over this!” “I’m never buying anything else from Amazon again,” and so on. I have a feeling Amazon has “Two words for you!”…. Take care 
Why? Because people who hack the devices do not make Amazon money. The devices are sold at cost to make them easy to get into customers’ homes. You do realize that Jeff Bezos is the 2nd richest person in the world and has his own space program, right? If Amazon loses the percentage of the population that buys Fire TV devices and changes the settings to allow for outside programs and downloads piracy apps, and also signs up for Prime, it can live with that. I would love to see just how many people that actually is. Becuase as long as the rest of the streaming customers are buying the product to use as designed it will get exactly what it wants.
For years Amazon has engaged in an ironic if not hypocritical practice of suing companies for distributing its TV shows and movies while also selling one of the most popular devices for piracy on the market. It’s like a sports car manufacturer suing people for speeding. There are websites built around how to soup up a Fire Stick with piracy apps. Those apps or APKs also work on Android, Android TV and Google TV (which are all flavors of the same thing). But the piracy community focused on Fire Sticks because they are cheap to the point that the term “Fire Sticking it” became a verb and a synonym for pirating it.
So when Amazon joins Roku and Apple TV in the closed system family, the company will not care who screams. It won’t be swayed by memes of Captain Picard with his head in his hand or people throwing away their already purchased Android-powered products (They will still work btw). They are moving on, and if it somehow costs them the sales of some unprofitable products, it will live.
It should be noted that the top operating system in the US is Roku. A platform that has been closed off from third-party apps for a number of years, since it stopped allowing private channels. That was supposed to be a big problem for Roku when it happened, according to the piracy community. To be fair, Roku was not known for its third-party channels in the way that Fire TV is, but there was an outcry amplified on Reddit forums and comment sections that would indicate that the whole world was ready to tear it all down, and yet here we are.
Apple TV was once the top product used to run Kodi/XBMC, until it wasn’t, and Apple is still going strong. Because Apple doesn’t depend on selling Apple TV. As far as I have seen it barely even tries to.
We will see just how much that community affects Amazon soon enough.
