Media-streaming devices from Apple Inc. and Google Inc., Apple TV and Chromecast respectively, will not be sold on Amazon starting October 29, 2015.
The top retailing company secretly informed its sellers through email that new product listings and posting of existing inventory will be removed as of the said date of the two items will no longer be allowed for the reason that those two don't "interact well" with Prime Video.
Email sent by Amazon to its sellers read as follows:
Dear Seller,
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. Therefore, Amazon has implemented listing restrictions for the followings products:
o Apple TV o Chromecast o Nexus Player
Effective immediately, you may no longer create new listings for these products, and as of 10/29/15, any existing listings for these products will be removed. There will be no adverse impact on your seller account for the removal, but we request that you refrain from relisting removed products.
Roku, XBOX, and PlayStation all interact well with Prime Video and are not affected by this change.
Thank you for selling on Amazon.
Sincerely, Amazon Services
As stated by an Amazon spokesperson, "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."
As one of the top retailers, this move may directly affect the sales of Apple TV and Chromecast. The latter would seem to lose more numbers for the lack of physical stores that sell it. On a lighter note, several media-streaming devices such as Roku Inc. 's set-top device, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation will not be affected by this move since they work with Amazon's video service.
This decision may perhaps go against Amazon's customer obsession principle. This brings confusing signal to consumers because the explanation given by the company may somewhat be vague. Prime Video works fine on Apple and Google operating systems. Apple and Google still haven't offered a public statement regarding the situation.
What do you think of Amazon's move of kicking out its product's major competitors from its shelves?
