Apple plans to announce Amazon Prime Video for Apple TV during its Worldwide Developer Conference keynote presentation on June 5th. Amazon also plans to start selling Apple’s entertainment device again once the app is available.
News of Amazon Prime on Apple TV surfaced earlier this month, although at the time insider sources didn’t say when we’d get an official announcement. Now sources tell Buzzfeed it’ll happen at WWDC, but they aren’t saying exactly when the app will be available.
WWDC is Apple’s annual conference for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS developers. The event always kicks off with a keynote presentation where Apple shows off the next major release for the operating systems, and often tosses in a few other announcements, too. This year it looks like one of those will be Amazon Prime on Apple TV.
Amazon Prime Warms Up to Apple TV
Amazon blocked Apple TV sales through its online store a couple years ago under the pretense of avoiding customer confusion since its app wasn’t on the device. Google Chromecast was blocked for the same reason. Now that Amazon is releasing Amazon Prime for Apple TV, it’ll allow sales again.
Whatever the reason for staying off of Apple TV has been resolved. No one is saying what changed, but it’s easy to speculate that Apple agreed to special terms just for Amazon. That could mean in-app purchases on our TVs, or maybe some sort of data sharing.
Adding Prime Video to Apple TV will make the device far more enticing to streaming video watchers because it’ll be the only set top box supporting all of the major services. To date, Amazon Prime has been the glaring hole in Apple TV’s offerings.
Both Apple and Amazon are keeping quiet about the announcement, so we’ll have to wait until June 5th for the official word.