Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Why Amazon Will Stop Selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast

According to BloombergBusiness, which broke the story, neither Amazon nor its affiliated resellers will issue new product listings for the three devices as of that date. All unsold inventory will be pulled from the site as well. You will, however, be able to buy other streaming players, notably Roku models, the Xbox and PlayStation game systems, and—of course—the new Amazon Fire TV.

An Amazon spokesperson sent us the same statement issued to news outlets: "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. Roku, XBox, PlayStation, and Fire TV are excellent choices."

The issue, it would seem, isn't that the banned Apple TV and Chromecast don't "interact" well with Amazon Prime; it's that unlike Roku, XBox, PlayStation, and Fire TV, they don't currently support Amazon Prime at all.

The Amazon move comes after Apple and Google updated their streaming media players: The new Apple TV is slated to arrive at the end of this month, and the revamped Chromecast is available now.

According to a recent Parks Associates report on streaming media devices, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Roku accounted for 86 percent of streaming media player sales to the nation's broadband households in 2014. That means that at the end of this month, Amazon will no longer sell two of the four top-selling players in the U.S. 

From the article "Why Amazon Will Stop Selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast" by Finance.Yahoo.com

Previously In The News

Smart Homes Are Cool, But Are They Safe?

Parks Associates found that there was little difference when it came to concerns about someone controlling smart products uninvited versus accessing the historical data products generate. In both case...

Alexa, how’s the smart home revolution doing? As it turns out, just fine

More than a third of broadband-equipped households now own at least one remotely monitored internet-connected device, with smart speakers outpacing the next most popular categories — thermostats and n...

Is Apple's TV upgrade too pricy for consumers?

Indeed, Apple TV trails Roku and Google for most-used streaming devices, according to research firm Parks Associates, while it is almost neck and neck with Amazon's Fire devices. By offering lower-pri...

Will the box office ever come back?

The pandemic's stay-at-home habits and the rise of streaming have conspired to create a strong appetite for watching new movie releases at home instead of in theaters. Parks Associates research indica...