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The Financial World Today: What’s Important (10/30/2011) Walmart Cuts Hours, Nook Trouble

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Walmart (NYSE: WMT) will begin to cut hours at some of its 24-hour stores, a sign of flagging traffic as the holiday retail period begins. Walmart has been in the process of rebuilding its domestic operations of years as people move to Target (NYSE: TGT) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). The IndyStar reports that “At select locations in markets across the United States, the nation’s largest retailer is ditching its round-the-clock, 24-hour schedule and closing some stores from midnight to 6 a.m.”

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) will become the equivalent of a huge global telecom enterprise as it integrates its Skype unit, recently purchased, it a number of its products. This integration will likely include Xbox360 and a number of Microsoft’s desktop products. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) began to put Windows mobile onto most of its phones, which means Microsoft will compete with itself and its allies. Skype, which 130 million active members, is a direct threat to the fees traditional telecom companies receive for voice and text services.

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) will increase the number of the Nook e-readers available in its largest stores. It expects that shoppers will buy the e-readers as gifts. The move is not likely to work. The Nook’s two most powerful competitors–the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Kindle and Kindle Fire–have already demonstrated they can draw huge consumer demand. Much of the Nook inventory will probably go unsold

Douglas A. McIntyre

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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.

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