Amazon’s jump into the chip business won’t change what’s in Fire devices — for now — but it’ll help the retailer drive more media delivery, file storage and cloud systems in homes and data centers.

Annapurna Labs, an Amazon subsidiary, said it would start selling a line of ARM-based chips for hardware that handles 4K video delivery, storage, IoT, cloud and networking. The chips will be sold to makers of products for homes and data centers.

The announcement surprised many, since selling chips is a radical shift from Amazon’s bread-and-butter retail business. But the company has jumped outside its comfort zone before, dabbling in new businesses such as Web hosting with AWS (Amazon Web Services), which has become a runaway success.

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