Walmart Buys VOD Firm Vudu, May Not Change Industry Landscape

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Feb 22, 8:09PM EST · Published Feb 22, 3:04PM EST

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The New York Times reports that Walmart (WMT) has bought video on demand hardware and software company Vudu. The firm’s service is built into set-top boxes and Blu-ray devices. The paper reports that Vudu recently “announced deals to puts its service into the devices of Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba and said it was expanding its older relationships with LG Electronics, Vizio and Mitsubishi.”

The transaction puts Walmart at the heart of a business that is dominated by cable set-top boxes, telecom fiber-to-the-home services, and satellite TV. Recently, high-tech leaders including Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) have also entered the field. NetFlix (NFLX) has launched its own video streaming services.

The online and cable-delivered premium video industry is probably already too crowded for Walmart to become a leader in the business. The world’s largest retailer is obviously operating under the assumption that its market share in the DVD business will give it access to consumers who want to us its branded product for online movies, video hardware products and HDTV. If wishes were horse all the beggars would ride.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.