Amazon announced Thursday that it will stop selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast starting Oct. 29. The ban of the two giant media-streaming devices is in response to its Amazon's Prime streaming, which has already become an important feature of the company over the past three years.
"It's important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion," said Amazon spokesperson Pia Arthur, according to USA Today.
It has also been noted that the decision to stop selling the two products is just a few days ahead of the holiday season, when these kinds of products are big sellers. It was also because of the anticipation for the holidays that both Apple and Google recently upgraded these video-streaming devices, as did Amazon, which makes a family of streaming gadgets under the moniker Fire TV, according to Yahoo! News.
Analysts say that the ban will not make any significant financial damage to the companies no longer able to sell the devices via Amazon. In fact, Paul Verna, a media analyst at eMarketer, said that the losers are the customers because the "feud" is going to create a confusion. "I don't think that in today's world consumers are going to not buy one of these products just because Amazon isn't selling it," Verna said, according to the New York Times.
The move is seen as Amazon's way of pushing its brand from being just a retailer into a much bigger tech and virtual provider.
