The world’s biggest retailer has long struggled to dominate the streaming video market against competitors like Netflix, Apple and Blockbuster. Now Wal-Mart is taking a new tack, The New York Times reports.
Sources told the Times that Wal-Mart has agreed to buy VUDU, a three-year-old company that embeds its streaming technology into high-definition TVs and Blu-Ray DVD players. Wal-Mart and VUDU began briefing movie studios and TV makers about the deal on Monday.
Control the User Experience
At the International Consumer Electronics Show in January, VUDU announced deals to embed its technology into equipment from Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba. It already has deals with LG Electronics, Vizio and Mitsubishi. VUDU doesn’t yet have any deals with Panasonic or Sony.
Why is Wal-Mart investing in a company that provides an embedded technology into brand-name electronics?
“This is all about trying to control the user experience and give Wal-Mart more direct access to the customer,” Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies, said in an e-mail. “The goal would be to integrate these services into next-generation TVs and Blu-ray/DVD players and try and integrate them into users’ overall digital experience to make it easy for them to gain access to movies over the Internet on demand.”
The Future Is in the Cloud
“This is a major trend and one that has a lot of potential if done right,” Bajarin added. “Best Buy’s approach, which includes cloud-based movie downloads of Cinema Now, is another great example of how this will work as they, too, will integrate these on-demand movies into an easy-to-use platform that can work with devices that have an Internet connection.”
Contrast this with Netflix’s approach, where users stream movies either by watching them on a laptop or buying and plugging in an Internet-aware device from Roku. That’s one more box and one more ugly cable…