Streaming Wars: Roku Will Benefit From Amazon’s Hit on Google & Apple

October 8, 2015

Amazon is booting Apple TV and Google Chromecast off of their virtual shelves just in time for the upcoming holiday season. The move has been said to be in the name of avoiding “customer confusion,” and it is worth noting that Chromecast and Apple TV “devices don’t interact well with Prime Video,” Amazon’s streaming service.

Amazon is failing to win over consumers with their streaming hardware, but that’s where Roku comes in. Roku sees more consumer feedback than Apple TV and Google Chromecast, and is compatible with the Amazon Prime app. With Apple and Google streaming devices banned from Amazon, Roku’s top competitors in the cheap streaming device market are effectively eliminated. Amazon’s Fire TV Stick is clearly a dud with consumers, but a move to promote a great piece of hardware that fosters Amazon Prime customers will help Amazon with their high priority “heavy push for memberships.”

Amazon attacked Apple and Google in the fight to increase their presence in the ever growing content streaming market. While Amazon’s Fire TV Stick can clearly not compete with a wealth of far more delightful hardware on the market, their move to ban Apple TV and Chromecast from their e-commerce site certainly has the potential to increase membership for Amazon Prime, their streaming service which was second only to Netflix in consumer conversation about streaming.

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