Walmart Rings Up Vudu
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
By Ross Rubin, Executive Director, NPD Connected Intelligence
This week brought news that Walmart has purchased Vudu, a one-time on-demand video device company that transformed its business to servicing connected TVs and Blu-ray players. As the largest seller of packaged home video in the country and one of the largest sellers of consumer electronics, Walmart clearly has an interest in maintaining its position as more video is consumed digitally, but also in establishing ties to the televisions and Blu-ray players that are featuring the Vudu service.
We have certainly seen large retailers buy into these kinds of services before, such as Best Buy’s nascent acquisition of Napster in 2008. Since then, Roxio snapped up CinemaNow, which also offered a mix of models of obtaining video-on-demand, but Vudu was further along in its ties to consuming content on televisions and thus a more robust competitor to DVDs and Blu-ray discs, particularly with its relatively high video quality. Vudu had also emerged as one of the key alternatives to Netflix for digital viewing, and its lack of a subscription requirement has made it more palatable to studios for digital distribution of movies day-and-date with the DVD/Blu-ray version.
As I blogged before regarding the Barnes & Noble Nook, there are untapped opportunities for retailers to more tightly tie digital distribution with the in-store experience. While Vudu currently doesn’t support mobile devices that consumers could physically bring to Walmart stores, consumers could rent an older catalog title via Vudu and get a discount coupon to pick up the modern remake on Blu-ray in the store.
Tags: Barnes & Noble, Nook, Vudu, Walmart
Consumer Technology | Ross Rubin, Executive Director, NPD Connected Intelligence | 
February 24, 2010 10:54 am
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