Back at the end of October Amazon announced a new dongle for your TV called the Amazon Fire TV Stick. The small HDMI device compares itself to Google’s Chromecast but bolsters some more powerful hardware as well as its own UI with physical remote. At the time of the announcement Amazon placed the Fire TV Stick up for pre-order. If you happened to be a Prime member you were able to grab the $39 unit for $19 during a short 48 hour window. Amazon planned to start shipping the pre-ordered units today.
In an announcement from Amazon, they have indeed confirmed that shipments for the pre-orders have started to go out. However, the demand was quite a bit higher than they anticipated.
“Fire TV Stick has been our most successful device launch ever,” said Dave Limp, Senior Vice President, Amazon Devices. “We built a ton of these, but customer demand still outpaced our supply. We’re excited by the overwhelming customer response and the team is working hard to build more as quickly as possible.”
Needless to say, many pre-order buyers are going to be waiting quite a while for their Fire TV Sticks to arrive. I myself ordered one on October 28th, the last possible minute for the Prime promotion, and my estimated deliver date is set for January 9th. Currently Amazon has the Fire TV Stick
listed to return to stock on January 15th which certainly doesn’t make it a hot device for the Holiday season now.
For those of you that are getting yours a bit sooner, then you will most likely want to go get your hands on the new Android app that was released today, Amazon Fire TV Remote. The Fire TV Remote app is the companion app for your phone and/or tablet. While the Fire TV Stick does come with a physical remote, the app gives you voice search functionality along with the ability to type on your device’s screen keyboard. Those that have experienced trying to type out something with a pointer on a TV screen knows just how painstaking that task can be.
The app is available now and is, of course, free. Feel free to pick it up below so you don’t forget, but don’t expect it to be functional at all until your Fire TV Stick arrives and is connected to your Wi-Fi network.
Amazon Fire TV Remote (Playboard) | Amazon Fire TV Remote (Play Store)
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