Amazon (AMZN) May Create Stand-Alone Service to Take On Netflix (NFLX)

Amazon.com shares are trading stronger Wednesday morning following reports the e-Commerce giant might be taking bigger strides into the streaming media sector, much to the chagrin of Netflix shareholders.

According to the NY Post, Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) might be aiming for a stand-alone, subscription-based media company to compete more wholly with Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX).

The unit would be different than Amazon's current offering of Instant Video, which is free for members of its Prime subscription. Amazon Prime also offers two-day shipping on items ordered from Amazon.

CEO Jeff Bezos has been looking to expand Amazon's streaming media environment, more recently paying $100 million for 2,000 hours of CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) TV shows. Amazon also has deals with News Corp.'s (Nasdaq: NWSA) Fox, Disney (NYSE: DIS), and Comcast's (Nasdaq: CMCSA) NBCUniversal.

Since the moves in early 2011, Amazon has been relatively quiet, noted the Post, as Amazon is either refreshing funds or planning on a bigger move for streaming media.

Amazon pays fees on the number of subs it has, currently estimated to be between 7 and 8 million for Amazon Prime. By comparison, Netflix has about 20 million streaming subs globally.

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