From Bloomberg Technology:
Walmart Inc. has a vast arsenal at its disposal in its battle with Amazon.com Inc.: stores, trucks, warehouses, even a blockchain-enabled supply chain of fruits and vegetables.
But there’s one weapon it’s barely deployed: Vudu, the video-on-demand service it bought eight years ago. Back then, Netflix was available only in the U.S. and Canada, Amazon was still a year away from offering free videos for its Prime members and Apple had just released its first iPad. With a library of 5,000 films from all the big studios available at the press of a button, Vudu promised to “revolutionize” the home-movie experience when it debuted in 2007.
It hasn’t worked out that way. As its competitors flourished, Vudu languished. Even though it’s pre-loaded in or can be downloaded to hundreds of millions of smart TVs, Blu-ray devices and video-game consoles — thanks to Walmart’s enormous clout with electronics makers such as Sony and Samsung — users spend just 1.9 hours a month on the platform, according to data tracker comScore. This compares with the 25 hours a month subscribers spend on Netflix.
“People are renting and buying less because they are binge-watching more,” said Colin Dixon, founder of industry analyst firm nScreenMedia. “That’s not good for Vudu, which is far, far behind the leaders.”
Vudu gave Walmart digital cred, but the primary rationale for the 2010 deal was to provide insurance against declining in-store sales of DVDs. Walmart bet that video buffs would continue to buy and rent loads of movies — they’d just move their titles to a digital shelf, or library, that Vudu would create and maintain for them.
. . . .
[T]he big prize is subscription streaming. With almost 1 million new U.S. households streaming video every month, the market is expected to grow to $84 billion by 2022 from $35 billion last year, according to Jim O’Neill, editor of video-industry publication Videomind. The average family uses between three and four different services, mainly Netflix, Amazon Video, YouTube and Hulu.
“It’s like keeping a star quarterback on the sidelines,” Miranz said. “With the flip of a switch, they could compete with Netflix.”
That’s easier said than done. For Walmart to seriously compete, it would have to devote resources — both creative and financial — toward providing original Walmart-branded content as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu have all done.
Link to the rest at Bloomberg Technology
PG says spending significant money to purchase another business, then not doing anything useful with it is a classic sign of poor management.
Oddly enough, I love vudu. Unlike Amazon, I don’t have to dig through six pages of junk to get to my content. And most of what I have on there (aside from TV seasons) is stuff I have in hard format too. I like knowing it won’t be yanked because a contract ended or it got rotated out of the line-up.
The article is missing a big piece of the puzzle: Hardware.
In tbe 2007-2010 timeframe, the primary non-computer streaming p!atforms were XBOX360 Sony PS3.
Roku didn’t arrive until 2008 and it didn’t gain much traction until 2010.
Yes, VUDU was available on the gaming platforms but it had to compete with the native video stores and those were much better integrated and promoted.
Microsoft video, in particular, used its own digital currency, Microsoft points which were used for games, addons, music, and video. They really didn’t leave much room for competitors and the 2005-2010 period was peak 360 so until Netflix and Hulu “buffet” subscriptions took over, XBOX ruled the living room. In fact, Netflix was XBOX exclusive for a year or so and NETFLIX CEO still sits on the MS board of directors. (Microsoft offered to buy Netflix, ca 2009, but he declined.)
Without a flagship hardware p!atform to drive VUDU adoption they were always going to be second stringers.
There is a reason Google came up with Chromecast and Amazon with the FireTV stick: to seed the market with cheap streamers that could undercut consoles and connected bluray players.
Hardware matters.
Controlling the hardware platform matters a whole lot.
Nintendo proved that in the 80’s.
Sony proved it in the 90’s.
Kindle proved it too.
Yes, it is very important to be multip!atform.
But it is vital to have a native platform that makes you shine.
Prime has it.
Vudu doesn’t.
Hmm, I’m still not into Blu-ray and there’s a reason I don’t buy TVs that won’t work if they can’t find the internet (FB’s current ‘oops” aren’t just a FB problem – there are others spying on their buyers …)
My mother does Netflix, Amazon and Hulu all from her laptop (it’s a big enough screen as she’s more interested in listening as she knits.) She prefers Netflix as the other two keep ‘stopping’ and waiting for user input rather than just going to the next show of a series.
‘Buy’ something you’ll only watch once? What are they smoking? 😉
I love that Netflix just moves on to the next episode of a season. 😀 Nice feature.
Part of the reason I, personally, stream is because, as a subscription service, I don’t expect to have ownership of what I buy. I know it’s temporary access. But with buying digital content, you’re shackled by DRM, able to only play it on certain devices, and subject to the whims of the company that’s so conveniently storing all that info in the cloud for you. And you have to pick one service and stick with it, or else have your library inconveniently spread across multiple services.
I don’t think I’m alone in not wanting to put money into “buying” digital content that’s so liable to flit away or be unusable to me so easily. I think a lot of us want to own what we buy and are happy to rent access to other content at a reasonable price. If I’m paying $20 for a movie, I want to be able to play it how I want to, without having to have an internet connection, and I want to know that it’s not going to suddenly disappear if the store I bought it from goes out of business, stops that part of its operation, or decides that for some obscure contract reason I don’t get to access the thing I bought anymore.
In other words, DRM (and the inability to straight download and save content locally) is probably at least some part of the problem with this model which relies solely on digital purchases and rentals. (And yes, this is also how most trad pub e-books work, too, but there are programs to deal with that pretty easily.)
As much as I am an Amazonphile, I still mostly stream Netflix. I find searching for a video on Amazon a bit frustrating, believe it or not. Or maybe I’m just used to Netflix. But I do use both of them, not Walmart. 😀
I believe it. Amazon’s user interface for streaming video is surprisingly bad. I don’t know why. Its interface for books is excellent, and it’s not as if an interface for streaming video is an unsolved problem: Netflix has it down solid. I would guess that Amazon doesn’t want to be seen as copying Netflix, but to therefore suck seems perverse.
I think Amazon relies/hopes on you using the audio interface. It’s on the remote for the Fire TV, but at least initially did not come with the Fire TV stick. I have great luck with it using voice. I would not want to try searching without voice.
Oh, maybe I should try that FIRE TV stick I got this week, complimentary, along with an Echo. I sent a letter to Jeff Bezos regarding Amazon Fresh –pros and cons and what they NEEDED to improve that had not regardless of my notification to the fresh folks–and I got the freebies. Still in the boxes. Thanks for the suggestion.
“original Walmart-branded content”
nothing funny pops into MY mind when I read that…