Sure, but it flatly contradicts everything Bezos says in this letter, and elsewhere, about Amazon being customer-focused rather than competitor-focused.
A truly customer-focused company would sell the products its customers wanted, even if they competed with the company's own-brand products. And demand for these competing products would be seen as a spur to improve their own.
I personally don't think the Amazon's talk of customer-focus is entirely marketing fluff, but I do think it's unevenly applied. Petty, anti-customer, monopolistic business practices have been a mainstay of the tech industry for years, and it's inevitable that they would infect Amazon to some extent.
Amazon stopped selling players that don't support Amazon Prime Video. That can been seen as first-order customer unfriendly, but second-order customer-centric, if you take the view that Amazon Prime Video is a consumer benefit overall. (I do, but I'm still annoyed that I can't get Apple TV on Amazon.)
Context: I'll admit to being a fairly rabid Amazon fan (no other conflicts, other than as a retail shareholder). I still cross-shop NewEgg (to support anti-patent-trolling), Ebay, Aliexpress and others, but Amazon wins more than its share of my purchase traffic.
Amazon's customer centric nature is generally pretty good, but they toss it aside at times. AIV on Android is one of those times (took them years to release the app and when they did it required a completely screwy install)
nah dog, Apple has said they are free to make an Apple TV app. But they won't for some reason. They don't even have to sell items through the app and incur Apple's cut.
I don't think it does contradict anything he says about being customer focused. In my opinion, and experience, it doesn't mean 'completely ignore your competitors and sell their products on your own store', it means 'Develop your products by listening to what customers tell you and not by watching and copying what your competitors do'.
If you take that as the intent behind the quote then it's kinda parallel to the issue of whether to sell chromecast or not.
A truly customer-focused company would sell the products its customers wanted, even if they competed with the company's own-brand products. And demand for these competing products would be seen as a spur to improve their own.
I personally don't think the Amazon's talk of customer-focus is entirely marketing fluff, but I do think it's unevenly applied. Petty, anti-customer, monopolistic business practices have been a mainstay of the tech industry for years, and it's inevitable that they would infect Amazon to some extent.