Advanced Television

Amazon halts Chromecast, Apple TV sales

October 2, 2015

Amazon has revealed it will stop selling media-streaming devices from Google and Apple that aren’t easily compatible with its Prime Video streaming service.

The online retail giant sent an email to its marketplace sellers that it will stop selling Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast since those devices don’t “interact well” with Prime Video. No new listings for the products will be allowed and posting of existing inventory will be removed on October 29th, Amazon said.

Roku’s set-top device, Sony Playstations and Microsoft Xboxes, which all work smoothly with Amazon’s video service, aren’t affected, it said. Amazon’s Fire TV stick, which plugs into an HDMI port to connect televisions with streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube, is the company’s best-selling electronic device.

The move comes just as the Christmas shopping season starts and shows how much Amazon is willing to sacrifice sales of popular brand name products to bolster its own services.

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