Amazon will stop allowing the sale of Google and Apple video-streaming devices on its site as it focuses on its own Prime Instant Video streaming service.
Prime Video has become an important part of Amazon’s $99 annual Prime loyalty membership program. The video-streaming devices sold on the site should be able to work with Prime Video, the company said Thursday.
“It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion,” Amazon said.
Along with Amazon’s Fire TV, the site will still sell other companies’ video-streaming devices that are compatible with Prime Video, including Roku, Xbox and PlayStation. But Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast will be not be sold.
The exclusion probably does not violate antitrust laws, experts say, because the Apple and Google products are still readily available at other retailers. “Amazon probably wants to teach Apple and Google a lesson about not making their devices more compatible,” Allen Grunes, a lawyer at the Konkurrenz Group, told Bloomberg. “This is one way to do it and it’s not likely anticompetitive.”
Google Inc. and Apple Inc. did not immediately respond to requests for comment
Seattle-based Amazon has been rapidly expanding its Prime Video Service, including recently inked deals to stream NBCUniversal’s critically acclaimed drama “Mr. Robot” and a multiyear licensing agreement with CBS.
Amazon.com Inc. shares closed up $8.83, or 1.7 percent, to $520.72 Thursday.
