According to BloombergBusiness, which broke the story, neither Amazon nor its affiliated resellers will issue new product listings for the three devices as of that date. All unsold inventory will be pulled from the site as well. You will, however, be able to buy other streaming players, notably Roku models, the Xbox and PlayStation game systems, and—of course—the new Amazon Fire TV.
An Amazon spokesperson sent us the same statement issued to news outlets: "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. Roku, XBox, PlayStation, and Fire TV are excellent choices."
The issue, it would seem, isn't that the banned Apple TV and Chromecast don't "interact" well with Amazon Prime; it's that unlike Roku, XBox, PlayStation, and Fire TV, they don't currently support Amazon Prime at all.
The Amazon move comes after Apple and Google updated their streaming media players: The new Apple TV is slated to arrive at the end of this month, and the revamped Chromecast is available now.
According to a recent Parks Associates report on streaming media devices, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Roku accounted for 86 percent of streaming media player sales to the nation's broadband households in 2014. That means that at the end of this month, Amazon will no longer sell two of the four top-selling players in the U.S.
From the article "Why Amazon Will Stop Selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast" by Finance.Yahoo.com
Parks Associates analyst Brett Sappington agreed that it will be compelling for some customers, particularly due to content that won’t be available elsewhere like MLS games and some of the college spo...
Loyalty is the name of the game for places like Netflix and Hulu going forward, Callahan says. “It’s much easier to keep a customer than acquire a new one,” he explains. High turnover has been one...
The benefit is that you can cancel any time you want, and are only committed on a month-to-month basis. This might serve as a good move for Amazon, allowing people to dip their toes into the Prime wat...
Netflix has by far the most loyal subscribers of its competitors, according to new research by Parks Associates. Analysts found that Netflix subscribers were much less likely to cancel than those o...