Wal-Mart Stores Inc quietly canceled its online video download service less than a year after the site went live, a company spokeswoman said on Thursday.
Wal-Mart shut down the download site after Hewlett Packard Co discontinued the technology that powered it, Walmart.com spokeswoman Amy Colella said in an e-mail. She added that it will not look for another technology partner.
HP spokesman Hector Marinez said the company decided to discontinue its video download-only merchant store services because the market for paid video downloads did not perform “as expected.” He noted that the Internet video business remains uncertain and is changing rapidly…
All the news about Wal-Mart shutting the service down sounded like it was their own decision. It seems that H-P must have walked in the door with the package in the first place – and back out, again, when it turned out not to be a winner.
In the world of envy and hangups, H-P:Apple as Microsoft:Google.
In other words, neither H-P nor Wal-Mart wanted to build a market. As with everything else these two behemoths do, they prefer to enter more stable markets and take over. Innovation to them means simply perfecting what is already being done.
No number of repititions can teach uncreative people that copycatting others’ business models don’t get it these days.
You’d think they mighta learned from trying unsuccessfully to mimic Netflix before trying a tepid clone of the iTMS.
No, Walmart canceled its movie service because in the end, no one bought any movies. This was because the prices were high, the same as the hard copy of the DVD, and asinine DRM restrictions, it had to be tied to one and only one computer.
Given the choice of the DVD which can be played on any number of devices or a movie downloaded from Walmart, the market chose the DVD.
The question is whether this was actually a serious attempt to start a movie download service or a purposeful failure to prop up its falling DVD sales.
If you believe the former, you have to accept that the movie industry and Walmart are run by idiots. And strangely, you have to accept the same if you believe the latter.
Danged if you do and…an idiot by any other name…
“Stella” !! “In a galaxy far, far away..” oops..
Why is Celine Dion in the photo?
“Why is Celine Dion in the photo?”
I wondered who that Dude was…
#7, #8
The dude is Carly Fiorina… former CEO at HP.
Wal-mart knows they can’t win. Smart move by Wal-mart, they hate to lose.
I think Walmart canceled its movie service because in the end, no one bought any movies.