The head of Amazon’s Fire TV unit is leaving for Apple and will lead their Apple TV efforts going forward. According to the report, Timothy Twerdahl will be taking up the role of VP for Apple TV product marketing, and he may end up using his expertise at Amazon to help usher in faster updates for the Apple TV platform, as Fire TV has been noted for updating their platform with new content and apps at a fairly rapid pace.
While Twerdahl heads up Apple TV as the new VP of product marketing, Pete Distad, who was the executive that was in the role previously, will now be running the content deals for Apple, and together the two of them may be able to deliver more content for the Apple TV platform, with Distad securing new content deals and Twerdahl working to update the platform to include the new content. Twerdahl has had plenty of experience at Amazon as part of their Fire TV division, having been the director of that division since 2013, but he’s also held important roles at Netflix as well as Roku. Netflix doesn’t have any set-top boxes of their own, but they are one of the largest streaming content partners for most of the companies that offer streaming media hardware, and Roku is one of those companies. This collective of experience in the industry from various streaming media-related companies makes Twerdahl perfect for the new role.
Distad is also nicely fit for his new position, as his combined efforts of running the Apple TV division before Twerdahl and having a role at Hulu in the past should help make securing the content deals an easier task. With Twerdahl now having moved to Apple, which reportedly happened as of this month though it wasn’t mentioned exactly when, Amazon will have to look at replacing Twerdahl if they haven’t already done so. With Twerdahl gone, it’ll also be interesting to see how successful Amazon’s Fire TV sales and platform are going forward, as Apple TV is likely to get a renewed boost now that a person partially responsible for Amazon’s Fire TV success is running the team.