Katarzyna Petru
Amazon has officially confirmed its plans for Vega OS, a new operating system that powers the latest Fire TV 4K Select devices. While this is just the beginning, the company promises that Vega OS will eventually be available on more Fire TV models – as part of a gradual rollout, with no specific release date.
Importantly, Vega OS does not yet change the look of the interface or introduce significant new features. This is more of a first step in a longer process aimed at separating Fire TV from Android. In practice, this means that Amazon wants to take full control of its system – from updates to future features.
For users, nothing is changing just yet – the new Fire TV televisions still run on a modified version of Android, namely Fire OS with Android DNA. But that will soon come to an end.
Building Your Own Application Ecosystem
As reported by Janko Roettgers from Lowpass, the biggest challenge for Amazon will be creating a new application ecosystem for Vega OS, which – unlike Android – is based on the Linux kernel. This means one thing: Android apps will not work on Vega OS.
Developers will therefore need to write their applications from scratch – just like with webOS from LG or Tizen from Samsung. To avoid launching with an empty application catalogue, Amazon has introduced a temporary solution: the so-called “cloud apps”, or applications that run in the cloud.
In practice, these are Android applications running on Amazon's servers – their interface and content are streamed to the device as if they were videos. This is exactly how cloud gaming works. However, not all applications will be available in this form. Amazon has stipulated that this applies exclusively to video applications – not games, not tools. Furthermore, Amazon itself will decide which of them are “worth” making available in the cloud. For users, this means that the most popular streaming services will appear on Vega OS right away, while the rest of the applications – if at all – will come only after being rewritten from scratch.
Risk: delays and disappearing apps
Amazon has ensured that developers will receive 9 months of free cloud hosting to have time to create native versions of their apps. What happens afterwards? That is unknown.
If creators do not make the deadline after these nine months – or simply decide that Vega OS does not make business sense – apps may disappear from users' devices. This is quite a risky scenario, considering that Vega OS is just getting started and has minimal market reach. An additional problem is the fact that Amazon is still developing Android’s Fire TV, which means that app creators face double the work – maintaining the Android version and the new Vega OS.
No Sideloading Capability
Another controversial decision: no ability to install applications outside the Amazon store (sideloading). Technically, Vega OS allows this, but Amazon has blocked this option for users – only developers can use it via the command line tool.
This is quite a limitation, as many Fire TV users rely on this feature to install apps that aren't available in the official store – often legal, but niche. So why the block? There could be two reasons: a desire to combat pirated streaming applications or complete control over its own ecosystem. Or maybe both.
It’s worth noting that Amazon isn’t alone in this – Google also restricts sideloading on Android TV and Google TV, citing pressure from regulators.
Own system, but is it own success?
Vega OS is an ambitious step by Amazon, which wants to become independent from Android and build its own television ecosystem – something similar to Apple, LG or Samsung. But the road to this goal is long and full of traps. On one hand, it's an opportunity for greater control over software development and user privacy, but on the other hand, there's the risk of fragmenting the ecosystem and losing applications that have so far powered Fire TV.
For now, Vega OS is just the beginning of a new era. Real changes are yet to come – and only then will we find out if Amazon can create something that lasts longer than nine months of free hosting.
