It's official: Amazon will stop selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast this month.
Amazon won't allow new listings for the rival streaming products to go up and will take down listings for current inventory by October 29, as outlined in an email Amazon sent to marketplace sellers and obtained by Bloomberg Business.
Amazon sells Apple TV and the first Chromecast (Google announced Chromecast 2 on Tuesday), but it cites concerns about Prime Video on the devices as the reason for removing them from its online storefront.
Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime," an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. "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."
As you can surmise, Amazon will continue to sell Roku, Xbox, PlayStation and its own Fire TV as these products work well enough with Prime Video. The Amazon Fire TV Stick is sticking around, too.
It's important to note that Apple TV users can't directly watch Amazon Prime Video movies or shows from the service (they can stream them from their iPhone or iPad via AirPlay). And Chromecast owners only have access to the Prime Instant Video app. Still, to completely stop selling the popular devices because one streaming service (owned and operated by Amazon) isn't natively supported on them seems like thin reasoning to push out the competing products.
Google, for one, created a Chromecast SDK so that developers could make their apps compatible with the streaming stick, and it's open to Amazon. We've asked Amazon whether it's worked on making Prime Video available on Chromecast using the SDK, and will update this story when we hear back.
