Amazon: It’s time you open up Prime Instant Videos to all Android users
Amazon just announced yesterday that it inked a pretty significant deal with Epix. Amazon claims that this deal will more than double the number of titles it will have available for streaming in its Prime Instant Video service, which is Amazon’s answer to Netflix. Notably, Amazon mentions that new and new-ish titles will soon be available to stream, such as The Avengers, Iron Man 2, The Hunger Games, Transformers Dark of the Moon, Thor and Rango, in addition to popular titles like Kick Ass, Paranormal Activity 2, True Grit, The Lincoln Lawyer, and – wait for it – Justin Bieber Never Say Never (sigh).
This is all fine and dandy, but Amazon, it’s about time you opened up Prime Instant Videos to all Android users, not just the ones who dropped $200 on your heavily-skinned Kindle Fire. You’ve already released an app for iPad, so we know that you aren’t necessarily opposed to letting other people have it. And since the Kindle Fire runs a version of Android anyway, and since some power users have gotten Instant Video up and running on their own Android devices, why haven’t you made it official yet?
Netflix, Hulu, HBO GO, Crackle, TV.com, and a handful of the other most popular video streaming services all have Android apps that work on both phones and tablets. What’s stopping you, Amazon?
You already have a Kindle app that runs on every Android device. You have an MP3 app that connects to your music service. You have several shopping apps. What’s the hold up?
The only thing that Amazon is accomplishing by not releasing the app to the entire Android ecosystem is ticking off otherwise loyal customers like me, and preventing the service from really taking off in the same way that Hulu and Netflix have. I really don’t stream videos from my laptop anymore; that’s what I use my tablet and phone for. Amazon needs to wise up and get this released ASAP.
[Amazon]
