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

Netflix Leads the Top-10 Subscription OTT Video Services

HBO Now leaped into the top-five for the first time, YouTube Red solidified itself into the top-10 for the first time, and both Showtime and Starz moved up or entered the list compared to 2016. "Wh...

Hub Research Finds an OTT Tipping Point

Hub said this year marked the first time since it began tracking viewing patterns in 2014 that viewers are "more likely to say they watch a recently discovered favorite show from an online source than...

Hulu Adds (Mostly) Ad-Free Subscription Service

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins chalked up the exceptions to rights held by studios on select series. “They have other commitments that they couldn’t free them up for a complete commercial-free offering,” he sa...

22 percent of smartwatch owners plan to use it for home control, automation

Parks Associates analysts say that mobile devices are becoming the de facto controllers for home automation, with apps as the critical interface between the user and the home. For example, nearly 50%...