Amazon to start selling latest Apple products, excluding speaker

Apple and Amazon.com, two of the world’s most valuable technology companies, struck a deal to get the newest iPhones into the hands of Amazon customers.

Amazon said Friday it would begin selling the most-recent iPhone, iPad, Mac computer, Apple Watch and Apple TV models on its website, along with branded accessories and headphones from Apple’s Beats subsidiary. Apple introduced the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max in late September. Previously, Amazon sold only older model iPhones.

“Amazon is constantly working to enhance the customer experience, and one of the ways we do this is by increasing selection of the products we know customers want,” the Seattle-based company said in a statement. “We look forward to expanding our assortment of Apple and Beats products globally.”

IPhone unit sales barely increased in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, Apple reported earlier this month, even though the new flagship devices came out in the period. The smartphone remains the Cupertino, California-based company’s most important device, generating about 60 percent of quarterly sales and tying customers to other services, such as Apple’s music and videostreaming.

The two tech giants have clashed in the past.

Amazon in 2015 stopped selling the Apple TV media-streaming device that wasn’t easily compatible with the e-commerce giant’s video service, an example of Amazon using its clout as the world’s biggest online retailer to promote products that helped push its own streaming content.

In 2016, Apple filed a lawsuit against Amazon alleging that the online retailer was selling counterfeit Apple products on its web store.

Amazon won’t be selling Apple’s HomePod, the iPhone maker’s competitor to Amazon’s popular Echo brand of home wireless speakers.