Walmart To Stop Selling Kindles
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Walmart has a ton of products for consumers to choose from. But soon it won’t be offering Kindles. The nation’s largest retailer has decided to drop Amazon’s Kindle tablets and e-readers. The move is not particularly unexpected considering that Amazon is a competitor to Walmart and Kindle tablets do a particularly good job tempting people to buy more from Amazon.
With this move, Walmart joins Target in dropping Kindles. Best Buy, Staples, and Office Depot will continue selling Amazon Kindles for now. Amazon’s business strategy for its Kindle platform (encouraging users to shop more at Amazon) could have something to do with this sudden move:
The Kindle Fire is the Trojan horse… It’s a shopping platform that covers so many more categories than e-books. It affects Wal-Mart in a different way than the early Kindles and e-readers did.
said Andrew Rhomberg, the chief executive of Jellybooks to NYTimes.com. To be more specific, Walmart is pulling all Kindles and not just Kindle Fire units:
We have recently made the business decision to not carry Amazon tablets and eReaders beyond our existing inventory and purchase commitments…. This includes all Amazon Kindle models current and recently announced.
This could become quite problematic for Amazon if more stores follow this path. Walmart dropping Kindles could impact Amazon’s sales a bit. But the platform is strong enough for Amazon to continue selling these cheap tablets and e-readers.
