Amazon Puts Instant Video On iPhone And iPod Touch, Cloud Player Music On Roku And Samsung Smart TVs
Amazon has announced a number of new platform expansions for its streaming media services today, including Cloud Player apps for Samsung Smart TVs and Roku set top boxes …
Context & Ripple Effects
The expansion lands in a week when Amazon is visibly working every edge of its device-and-media ecosystem at once: alongside this announcement, the company has pushed notifications to Kindle Fire via Device Messaging and launched localized Kindle apps and a bookstore in China. Those moves sit against a shrinking dedicated-reader market — a study out this week pegs e-reader shipments down 36% this year as tablets displace them.
Against that backdrop, putting Instant Video on iPhone and iPod touch and Cloud Player on Roku boxes and Samsung Smart TVs reads less like goodwill toward rivals' hardware than a hedge: if Amazon cannot own every screen, it will rent space on everyone else's. The breadth of pickup — The Verge, CNET, Engadget, GigaOM, VentureBeat, GeekWire, BGR all carrying it the same day — signals how closely the press is watching Amazon's platform ambitions.
First-order effects
- iPhone and iPod touch owners gain access to Amazon's Instant Video catalog on Apple hardware, and Roku set-top and Samsung Smart TV owners gain Cloud Player music — Amazon content now reaches three screen categories the company does not manufacture.
Second-order effects
- Apple hosts a direct competitor's video storefront on its own devices, while Roku and Samsung each get a content differentiator over rival streaming boxes and smart-TV platforms that lack Amazon's catalog.
Third-order effects
- If premium media services keep decoupling from first-party hardware — the same logic behind Amazon's China bookstore push as e-reader shipments fall — distribution deals rather than device ownership become the battleground for digital media reach.
The trend: Consumer cloud media services are going aggressively multi-platform as hardware lock-in loses value, with Amazon leading by placing its catalogs on competitors' screens.