Recently, online retail giant Amazon (AMZN) had one huge day, showing off a range of new devices at its fall hardware event in New York City. Amazon showed off everything from a new operating system for Fire TV Stick systems to a new Kindle to multiple Echo speakers and Ring cameras. All these devices certainly got investors’ attention, and shares were up fractionally in Thursday afternoon’s trading.
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Amazon has not exactly been neglecting its hardware before this event hit. It rolled out a major large language model upgrade for Alexa in the form of Alexa+. The hardware revealed recently, meanwhile, was designed to take advantage of that. For instance, several new Echo speakers with several new price points and feature sets emerged. Though these are not the fifth-generation models some hoped for, they will still provide some substantial upgrades.
Ring doorbell cameras are now available in 2K and 4K resolutions, and then there is the matter of the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, a new version of one of the newer models in the Kindle ecosystem. Reports suggest that the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is “40% faster,” though faster than what is not exactly clear.
“Soundbar Killer”
One item that did not get shown off at the big event, but apparently made its way around the review circuit, was the Alexa Home Theater system. And this, for cinephiles out there, could represent a major leap forward. Most anyone who has set up a home theater system before knows about multi-speaker systems. But the Alexa Home Theater system will work with multiple Echo Dot Max or Echo Studio speakers to create the multi-channel sound experience that makes home theater truly great.
With Alexa Home Theater, all those speakers can be wirelessly connected to a Fire TV Stick that works under this system, and then, automatically detected. The media stick then routes the relevant signal to the relevant speaker, and multi-channel audio playback is yours. Some even consider this a “soundbar killer,” which is a leap forward in its own right.
Is Amazon a Good Long-Term Investment?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 43 Buys assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 21.25% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AMZN price target of $267 per share implies 20.28% upside potential.
