This article was published on September 20, 2012

Walmart will stop selling all Amazon Kindle devices as it attempts to become a real online competitor


Walmart will stop selling all Amazon Kindle devices as it attempts to become a real online competitor

Enormous retail chain Walmart will cease selling all Amazon Kindle products, reports Reuters. The initial report is a brief that is based on an internal company memo.

Reuters on the memo:

“We have recently made the business decision to not carry Amazon tablets and eReaders beyond our existing inventory and purchase commitments,” Wal-Mart said in a memo sent to store managers dated September 19. “This includes all Amazon Kindle models current and recently announced.”

Target stores stopped selling Kindles a few months ago.

Amazon recently introduces their new Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Paperwhite tablets, the former of which just became available for sale. Over the past decade, Amazon has increasingly positioned itself as an alternative to walking into a retail store to make a purchase, and recently launched ‘same day’ shipping in test locations.

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Amazon likely sells the vast majority of its Kindle products via its own site, so it’s unlikely that this will hurt them much if at all. As Amazon positions the devices as a way to encourage a virtuous loop where customers continue to purchase their digital and even physical products via the devices, it’s likely other retailers will tire of selling a competitor’s retail store right from their own shelves.

We’ve reached out to Amazon for information and we’ll flesh this report out with more details as we have them.

Image Credit: Joe Klamar/Getty

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