A look at multiple motivations behind Amazon's move to stop selling Apple TV, Nexus Player, and Chromecast devices
What's behind Amazon's baffling decision to ban Apple TV and Chromecast? — Amazon's decision to ban sales of Apple TV and Google's Chromecast and Nexus Player from its retail store …
Context & Ripple Effects
Announced October 2 with an effective date of October 29, the ban covers any streaming box that doesn't carry Amazon Prime Video — while Roku, Xbox, and PlayStation stay listed because they do. The Verge's framing treats it as a multi-motivation move rather than a pure content play.
It caps a year of Amazon tightening its storefront: the company had already banned the Kodi/XBMC app over piracy concerns in June. The removal was executed fully on October 31 — every listing gone, including third-party resellers — before Amazon reversed itself and resumed selling both rivals' devices two years later.
First-order effects
- Apple TV, Chromecast, and Nexus Player sellers lose the largest US retail channel overnight, since Amazon purges even third-party marketplace listings rather than just first-party stock.
Second-order effects
- Google and Apple face a choice between accepting lost distribution and building Prime Video into their own devices — and the 2017 resumption of sales implies they chose the latter path to get back on Amazon's shelves.
Third-order effects
- If retailers can condition hardware visibility on carrying their services, device makers' product roadmaps start bending toward the biggest storefronts — a gatekeeping dynamic that persisted until the 2017 reversal showed the tactic cuts both ways.
The trend: Streaming hardware distribution is becoming a bargaining chip for content platforms, with Amazon using its storefront to force Prime Video onto rival devices.