Amazon Bans Competition from Streaming Devices

Is Amazon afraid of a little competition? It looks like it from their recent action of banning the sale of rival streaming devices from their site. Since the online buying and selling site will be launching their own streaming service, they do not want any other streaming devices to take their thunder away.

You can say goodbye to Apple and Google streaming devices for good, as you will no longer find them on Amazon. Instead, the company will be introducing their own streaming service called Prime Instant Video, which buyers can use with Amazon’s Prime Video streaming device sold on their site.

The Prime Video streaming device is part of the company’s $99 Prime loyalty program. With them introducing Prime Video, they do not want to give customers other streaming options with competitive products , opting to exclusively promote their own. Prime Video allows users access to popular TV shows and films. They can watch the shows from their Fire TV, TV, tablet, mobile phone, game console, and from over 600 devices. People can take the videos to watch later on their Kindle Fire with more than 15,000 choices.

The company has also introduced Prime Music, which gives users access to more than a million songs, hundreds of playlists, and the best part, it’s ad-free. They can read Kindle books, stream TV shows and movies, and it even lets them store their pictures. They offer a thirty day trial for users to try their streaming services and then decide if they want to purchase it.

The spokesperson from Amazon said, “It’s important that the [Prime Instant Video service] we sell interact[s] well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion.”

This is not to say that the company will ban the sale of all video streaming devices. They will only feature streaming devices that are compatible with Amazon’s Fire TV such as Roku, PlayStation, and Xbox. Unfortunately, Google’s Chromecast and Apple TV are not part of that list, so they will not be available for purchase on Amazon.

Media outlets did try to reach out to Apple Inc. and Google Inc. to understand their position on the sales ban, but they couldn’t be reached for comment. They may soon release a comment to address this ban by Amazon, which is one of the largest and most widespread e-commerce companies in the world today. How will this announcement affect Apple and Google? Only time will tell if the sale of their streaming devices will take a hit.

For a long time, Amazon has busied itself in expanding their Prime Video Service. They have secured deals with NBC Universal’s popular drama “Mr. Robot” and a multi-year licensing agreement with CBS.

You can expect more great content from Amazon coming down the pipeline, as the company wants to continue their expansion to become the number one video and music streaming source for customers.