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The debut of Disney+ is just a couple of months away, and word is the streaming service will launch with a catalog less than a fifth the size of Netflix's (NASDAQ: NFLX). It also will carry a smaller, $6.99 monthly price tag, and will be supported by all the major streaming platforms -- with one glaring exception.
At launch, Disney's (NYSE: DIS) service won't be available on Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Fire TV. Despite being one of the two dominant platforms in the streaming player market -- the other is Roku's (NASDAQ: ROKU) eponymous platform -- Fire TV is getting the cold shoulder in the biggest new video-on-demand launch since Hulu.
Image source: Getty Images.
No accident
It's not unusual for streaming services to launch with incomplete platform support, but they typically start with at least support from both Roku and Fire TV. When there are exceptions, it's usually a reflection of a rivalry: For instance, Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) YouTube TV wasn't available on Amazon's Fire TV until July -- more than a year after it debuted -- but that's to be expected given the feud between the tech giants.
Could the Fire TV issue just be an unfortunate miscue related to the Disney+ development schedule? Unlikely. Disney+ will work on Android and Android TV at launch, and Fire TV is built on Android. Indeed, the platforms are so similar that users can upload Android apps to Fire TV as .apk files and run them in developer mode. (They don't always work perfectly, given the lack of a touch screen, but they do load.) And Amazon directly tells developers that they can put the same exact apps in the Amazon Appstore and the Google Play Store.
It's hard to see Disney+ launching with an app for Android TV but without one for the more-popular Fire TV as anything other than intentional.
Here's to you, Roku
Disney doesn't own a major streaming platform like Roku or Fire TV, but it is about to launch a competitor to Amazon Prime Video, and Amazon is aggressive about prominently surfacing its own content on its Fire TV platform.
On Fire TV, Amazon content -- including movies to rent, titles from a user's library, and videos that are free with Prime -- occupy spaces on sliding menus within tabs. Meanwhile, entire apps -- like Netflix's or Hulu's -- get individual icons no larger than the icons that are given to each Amazon title.
By contrast, Roku's platform is more agnostic. Its home screen shows a grid of icons -- one per app (or "channel," as Roku calls its apps) -- so Disney+ will be on equal footing with Amazon Video. If access to Disney+ can help tip the scales in Roku's favor -- at Amazon's expense -- that would presumably be just fine with Disney.