Filed under: Consumer experience, Internet, Competitive strategy, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Wal-Mart (WMT), Netflix, Inc. (NFLX), Apollo Investment (AINV), Videos, Technology

Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) was early to the video download service, beginning to offer movies over a year ago. Now that service has been shut down, according to Reuters. The company states that Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) is no longer offering the technology needed to run the operation, but that seems pretty thin.

Wal-Mart probably figured out that having a lot of customers on the internet does not translate into successfully offering them new services. Most on the internet research numbers show walmart.com as one of the top two or three e-commerce sites. But Wal-Mart customers are often not affluent and may not be ideal targets for a video download operation.

There is also the question of competition. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has its iTunes service, which is growing. Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) has another, similar operation, and there are a dozen others.

People might purchase clothes and household goods from a retail website, but that does not mean that the customers can be moved to digital downloads. “Would you like a movie with that shirt?” does not necessarily work.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Companies Competitive Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.