Apple is involved in several antitrust cases around the world, alleging that its practice to charge relatively large App Store fees as a percentage of a digital purchase is justified.
However, when it comes to putting its digital content on other platforms, Apple seems to want to avoid paying those fees to the platform owner altogether – removing its content completely rather than paying the fee.
On Android TV devices, users can no longer purchase or rent movies, nor can they pay for subscriptions. The move affects devices running Google TV.
As reported by FlatPanelsHD, users can no longer directly buy or rent movies on the Apple TV app for Android TV. On-device Apple TV plus subscriptions are also unavailable.
When users try to rent or buy movies, they get a “how to watch” notification that redirects to Apple products and “other streaming devices.”
Apple TV first became available on a few Android TV devices towards the end of 2020. By mid-last year, it was available on all Android TV devices.
It is not clear why Apple has pulled the plug on the Google-owned platform, though those with sources from inside Apple suggest that it’s because Apple had an agreement with Google that the App Store fees would be waived for a limited time – and now that time is up.
