Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos deftly dodged questions by "60 Minutes" reporter Charlie Rose about his company's reported secret set-top box project that would allow customers to watch streaming video without a cable provider.
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In an interview with Bezos that aired Sunday evening, Rose asked Bezos if Amazon was working on such a set-top box. Bezos replied: "I can't answer that question. I don't want to talk about the future roadmap of our devices… I'll just have to ask you to just stay tuned."
Amazon has been dodging questions about its reported plans to launch a set-top for several months. Back in April, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that Amazon was working on a device that would stream video over the Internet and plug into a TV to provide access to an array of Amazon video offerings such as video-on-demand, Instant Video and Amazon Prime.
Although all of Bloomberg's sources requested anonymity, the fact that the company was working on such a device was not surprising. There already are other companies out there working on similar projects such as Roku, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) TV and Boxee.
Supposedly, Amazon's set-top box efforts are being headed by its Lab126 division in Cupertino under the direction of Malachy Moynihan, who formerly served as Cisco's (Nasdaq: CSCO) vice president of emerging video products and spent nine years with Apple during the turbulent 1980s and 1990s.
During the "60 Minutes" interview, Bezos did reveal Amazon's experimentations with drones that the company thinks could eventually deliver packages directly to customers. However, he said it would likely not be commercially available for another 5 or more years.
For more:
- See this Multichannel News article
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