This isn't surprising. The semiconductor market is not in the greatest shape and if the disty can't add enough value, it no longer makes financial sense for the manufacturer to do business with them. Once exception will always be Japan, here the disty is required by law and that's not likely to change. The disty are basically mafia there, it's kind of funny. You go to visit a Japanese company and it's you/your people and the company representatives doing all the talking, but there are these couple guys with laptops just sitting there and typing... Not really contributing anything... Probably won't send you any notes after the meeting... But their presence is required by law!
It is true that the disty is adding value by saving customers time when they processing paperwork and submit orders to multiple vendors for a single order, but this is not really a value add for the manfacturer. A majority of most semiconductor companies' revenue comes from large volume purchases, large enough that the purchaser isn't really worried about this paperwork. Sucks for the little guy, but hey, if you don't like it, work hard and be a bigger fish. Otherwise don't complain because it is what it is.
The value add for the semiconductor manufacturer is when the disty is actually knowledgeable on the parts they can offer and find new opportunities, customers, and projects for the manufacturer. This also is an opportunity for the manufacturer to get intel on new product opportunities and ideas. IMHO many of the disty's have failed miserably on this in the past decade or so and this change was due a long time ago. This has caused some manufacturers to work out deals where if the volume is greater than X, the opportunity is removed from the disty and pulled internal, removing the disty margin. They have not been happy about deals like this but didn't really have a choice but to comply. They have been fighting tooth and nail to just keep what they have.
I would bet that there was a bidding war on disty margin, lowest bidder takes all, and Arrow won?
I'd expect decisions like this from other semiconductor companies as well, especially ones which sell a lot of differentiated(i.e., not commoditized) type products in the market.