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Amazon Will Resume Selling Apple TV, Google's Chromecast (axios.com)
Ina Fried, reporting for Axios: Amazon confirmed Thursday that it will again sell the Apple TV set-top box and Google Chromecast dongle. The company had stopped selling the devices amid disputes with both giants. There's a lot of frenemy stuff at play here, with Google, Apple and Amazon all selling their own streaming devices, but also looking to offer their own services on one another's devices. Apple doesn't offer its programing on rival devices, but does move a lot of hardware through Amazon.
Vendors too do not want to let Amazon grow too big for them to handle, and they don't want to depend too much on Amazon. Walmart is prohibiting its vendors from using Amazon cloud services for their inventory management and such stuff. It claims, fairly or unfairly, Amazon snoops on the cloud data.
Amazon is quite vulnerable, and at some point it might spin off the profit making Cloud services and detach it from the low margin retail sales.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This rarely happens. Amazon execs must have felt an uncomfortable lump in their throat before electing to cut their losses.
No. The reason they are willing to sell AppleTV's again is because they have just recently released their Amazon Prime Video app for the AppleTV. So the device is a doorway for their content platform now.
I"m good with it...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Retail (until you get into the absurdly high-end) is by it's nature low-margin - I don't think Amazon or its investors have a problem with that. They have been brilliant in not only growing vertically, but as you point out horizontally when the market is lucrative. I expect them to make a similar move in the logistics space eventually.
Anyway, never expect Amazon to have sharply different prices than the best brick-and-mortar competition. But generally they are within a few percent, and it's all centrally located. It's a huge PITA to go to Target for a few things, and then Walmart for stuff that is lower-priced there. For dedicated coupon-clippers, this won't satisfy - but for a lot of shoppers it is sufficient to buy from Amazon unless the prices are way off. Chrome plugins that check your Amazon price against those elsewhere also cover your back...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I know personally, that in the last week after the AppleTV client launch, I have used Prime Video more than I have since the launch of the service (years ago now).
What happened was, Amazon saw the figures coming in from things like AppleTV clients and realized the simple truth that the way you get people to use your video service more, is to actually let people use it across many devices, not just the ones you sell. Now that the Prime Video client is on Chromecast and AppleTV, every one sold is potentially more prime subscribers for Amazon...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe they listened to their own net neutrality arguments, and realized that (1) it was hypocritical to be arguing for net neutrality against the ISPs while simultaneously blocking competitors from their store. And (2) while a direct opportunity to help their own product sales existed by blocking competitors, there were indirect consequences in that the competitors could block theirs as well. Since it was a zero sum game, there was nothing to be gained by going down that route, and a lot of money to be lost inconveniencing customers just to arrive at the same final destination. (That is to say, progress comes from making your stuff better than others'. Throwing roadblocks in front of others to drag their products down may temporarily help your product get ahead, but it results in a long-term loss for all of society once everyone starts throwing up roadblocks.)
In other news, tit for tat leads the prisoner's dilemma to the optimal solution again.
Right? Kudos to comcast and verizon for being such good corporate citizens. Especially Comcast, did you know that for the past 3 or 4 years they've been rated as America's most loved company?
"Google can scrape the site and show the product offered in all these sites. "
This can be difficult. I don't know about others, but Costco products often have special UPC codes (identifiers). The same item from the mfgr has a different number which is also used by smaller retailers. If Amazon & Walmart do likewise with special codes, it will be harder to compare prices with a Google search. And that's the whole point, of course.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Just so Google doesn't block Amazon from putting an Alexa app in the play store, or block it's communication on the phone or network, I'm fine with them only selling Google hardware, same with Apple.
Amazon on the other hand sells just about everything, including identical products from other companies. I can get a 55 gallon drum of lube, and a horse head mask, but not a Chromecast?
I thought I read that Google's reasoning had more to do with a lack of features (login, subscriptions, comments, thumbs etc) that were not in the Amazon YouTube app? I'm sure it's mostly smoke and mirrors, but I'm also sure they want YouTube to look and feel how they want it to look and feel.
Cheers!