According to
a report from Recode this morning
, Apple and Amazon may have come to an agreement that will finally bring the Amazon Video app to Apple TV. The app is expected to be released in the third quarter of 2017, and would?offer Amazon subscribers an easier way to watch content on Apple TV instead of having to use AirPlay.
Amazon and Apple have been at odds for years,?as both want consumers to buy their hardware and use their services for watching or buying video content. Amazon in the past leveraged its position as the top internet retailer to
ban sales of Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast
on its site in fall 2015, for example, hoping that it could then push users to Fire TV instead.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s video app never made it to Apple TV’s platform – even though one was in works. Shortly after the Apple TV ban on Amazon.com, an Amazon customer who sent feedback to the company through its video app received an email from customer support which said
Amazon’s?engineering team had an Apple TV app in development
.
But the companies have disagreed on business terms, as Bezos had explained.
Speaking the Code Conference last year
, he clarified that he does want Amazon Video on Apple TV, but only if the deal was “acceptable.”
The lack of an Amazon Video app for Apple TV is only one of the issues between the two companies. Their disagreements, unfortunately, impact their own customers as many of today’s consumers?use devices and/or?services from both Apple and Amazon. For example, users can’t purchase or rent videos from the Amazon Video app that exists on iOS today – you have to visit Amazon’s website to perform the transaction.
If a deal between Apple and Amazon was worked out at last, it would have been done at a high level between CEOs Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos, the report also said. It’s unclear for now what the terms may have been or if they’ll extend to other areas of overlap between their companies, like Apple TV sales on Amazon.com or in-app purchases.