Amazon to Stop Selling Apple TV and Chromecast
- 9 years ago
Amazon said on Thursday that it would stop selling devices from Apple and Google that compete with its own streaming media players, escalating the entertainment battle between the major tech companies.
Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast are popular items in Amazon’s electronics store. But the devices are in a brawl for market share with Amazon’s Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, which were introduced in 2014. The Fire Stick delivers Amazon’s rapidly expanding video offerings to its customers. Apple TV and Chromecast do not.
Amazon’s move to ban competitors is not a retailing gambit. In fact, the company is willing to risk annoying customers who cannot get what they want because it is pursuing a much bigger prize. The stick is crucial to Amazon’s ambitions to move from being just a retailer to a multifaceted provider of everything virtual and physical.
“It’s unlike Amazon to be this territorial,” said James McQuivey, an analyst with the research firm Forrester. But he said it was a logical and perhaps inevitable move.
Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast are popular items in Amazon’s electronics store. But the devices are in a brawl for market share with Amazon’s Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, which were introduced in 2014. The Fire Stick delivers Amazon’s rapidly expanding video offerings to its customers. Apple TV and Chromecast do not.
Amazon’s move to ban competitors is not a retailing gambit. In fact, the company is willing to risk annoying customers who cannot get what they want because it is pursuing a much bigger prize. The stick is crucial to Amazon’s ambitions to move from being just a retailer to a multifaceted provider of everything virtual and physical.
“It’s unlike Amazon to be this territorial,” said James McQuivey, an analyst with the research firm Forrester. But he said it was a logical and perhaps inevitable move.