Amazon Plans to Stop Selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast

[dgstorm]

Perhaps Amazon is trying to fortify their wall of content against competitors Apple and Google. Amazon supposedly sent out a memo to all of their merchants indicating they will ban the sales of the Apple TV and the Google Chromecast effective October 29th. New listings for any version of these devices will no longer be permitted on Amazon.

For some reason, Amazon is fine with Roku, Xbox and PlayStation. Of course, they will continue to sell and push their own Fire TV as well. Amazon's "justification" for this action is that it wants to sell living room devices which are fully compatible and optimized for Amazon Prime Video. Amazon said in the email, "Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime. It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion."

Currently, Chromecast and Apple TV owners can't purchase movies or TV shows directly from Amazon's digital store. Amazon has refused to share a percentage of content sales to Apple or Google. It looks like Amazon is taking the development of their own content ecosystem to a draconian extreme, and adopting an Apple-like "walled garden" strategy. Of course, one could argue that they are simply adopting to the harsher profit sharing stances of Apple and Google.

What do you folks think? Is this a wise move on Amazon's part, or will it hurt their reputation? Will this hurt the sales of the the Apple TV or the Chromecast?

Source: Amazon to Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

 

[scifan57]

Amazon has been doing this for years. You can't buy books in the Kindle app or audiobooks in the Audible app. Amazon just doesn't want to pay Apple the 30% cut of sales.

 

[Asharp]

I went into shock when Apple introduced a Microsoft rep. at last month's Apple WWDC 2015 Keynote Address. It looked like some audience members had the same reaction. All things change. Maybe it will for Amazon and Apple. Someday.