In that’s sure one way to middle finger the competition news, Amazon is about to stop selling the Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast.
Apparently, all traces of said devices will be gone from Amazon.com by October 29th.
Bloomberg got its hands on a recent letter to third-party sellers:
No new listings for the products will be allowed and posting of existing inventory will be removed Oct. 29, Amazon said. Amazon’s streaming video service, called Prime Video, doesn’t run easily on rival’s devices.
“Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime,” Amazon said in the e-mail. “It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion.”
Roku Inc.’s hardware, Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox, and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation, which work with Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service, aren’t affected, Amazon said.
From that, it’s pretty clear that Amazon is blaming the move on the fact that Apple TV and Chromecast lack of Amazon Prime Video support.
And that could be part of it, I guess. But Amazon also sells these things called the Fire TV and the Fire TV stick, which just happen to be direct competitors of the Apple TV and Chromecast.
Oh well. There are plenty of places to buy Apples TVs and Chromecasts.
This has been the latest installment of When Corporate Giants Can’t Get Along.