May 19th, 2009
Wal-Mart makes electronics assault on Best Buy official
Wal-Mart confirmed plans to bolster its electronics selection in a move to grab the void left by Circuit City before Best Buy grabs it all.
Confirming a Wall Street Journal report on Monday, Wal-Mart issued a statement on its grand electronics plan across its 3,500 stores. In a nutshell, Wal-Mart is gussying up its stores with new signs, better displays and more products. It will add a hi-def area, tout Blu-ray players and movies and offer more HDTVs.
In addition, Wal-Mart will push more wireless products and laptops from the likes of HP, Dell and Toshiba. Specifically, Wal-Mart set up some interesting products for its big launch. To wit:
- It’ll offer Dell’s Studio One 19 All-in-One touchscreen desktop exclusively in June;
- Expand its Acer netbook lineup;
- Stump for the Sony E-Reader setting up an interesting distribution war with Amazon’s Kindle;
- And trying to ride the wireless wave. Wal-Mart will expand distribution for the BlackBerry Bold and Storm with AT&T and Verizon Wireless, respectively. Wal-Mart will also push the Pre.
Best Buy management has said on recent conference calls that competition from Wal-Mart is nothing new. We’ll find out whether that’s true in future quarters. Given that Wal-Mart has been gaining customers amid the recession I wouldn’t be so quick to write these efforts off.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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