NEW YORK, June 11 -- For the first time since 2021, Amazon Prime Day will not happen in July. The four-day sale, scheduled for June 23 through June 26, lands in a month shoppers rarely associate with the year's biggest tech discounts - and the company has already started proving the timing was not arbitrary.

An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC Select that the company evaluates Prime Day timing each year and determined that moving the event earlier in the summer was the best fit for customers in 2026. That is the official line. The operational reality is somewhat more interesting: early deals are already running, some Apple products are sitting at their lowest prices of the year, and the move puts Amazon in direct competition with Target's C...