Posted on 09/20/2012 11:02:07 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
Wal-Mart is reportedly planning to stop sales of Amazon Kindle products in its stores, Reuters reported, apart from its existing inventory and pending orders.
According to Reuters, the decision was outlined in a memo obtained by the wire service that said the change is in line with the company’s merchandising strategy. It follows a similar decision from retailer Target, which announced in May that it would no longer sell Kindle devices.
~snip~
While Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer, it competes fiercely with Amazon, which is ambitiously expanding the number of goods and services that it delivers straight to its customers — often through devices such as the Kindle e-reader and the Kindle Fire tablet. Amazon could not be immediately reached for comment.
Retailers have been particularly critical of the online marketplace and its contribution to the trend of “showrooming.” They complain that customers often come into their brick-and-mortar stores to see or try out products that they’re interested in buying, only to leave and purchase the goods online, where prices often do not include sales taxes.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
As far as what I have read on my Kindle since May, titles include: Freakonomics, Water for Elephants, Outlaw Platoon, Killing Lincoln, the Biography of Antonin Scalia, The Hunger Games trilogy, The Unforgiving Minute, and False Negative (a crime novel written by a family friend, Joe Koenig).
I'm now reading Clockers by Richard Price and Atlas Shrugged is on deck.
I have a Kindle Fire and I love it. I can watch movies or read a book, magazine in full color. You can check your email, browse the internet and post on FR like I’m doing right now. It’s easy to use. The downsides, you can’t stream video to your TV with it. You have to buy your ebooks and video content through Amazon. For the price, it’s a good choice.
I wouldn’t think of going to Walmart for a Kindle when I can just make a few clicks on my computer and have one at my house in 1 or 2 days.
In our house, we have 5 Kindles (of various models) and a Kindle Fire that I bought for myself when it first came out. Today I ordered the new Kindle Fire HD for delivery tomorrow.
We also have an iPad 2 and an iPad 3. For my uses, I prefer the Kindle Fire - I’m very much an Amazon-centric person. When I use a computer, I want one with two monitors and lots of hard drives. For me, an iPad just doesn’t do anything I need more than a Kindle Fire.
But again, I can’t imagine why anyone would buy a Kindle from any place other than Amazon.
You can with the new Kindle Fire HD. It has a mini-hdmi port. An iPad can't do that.
Hey, doesn’t bother me. We get 5% more royalty per book on an e-book than on a paper/hardcover!
Yep, that's the downside right there, you're limited to Amazon. I've come to think it's just a matter of consumer education. I have many, many friends with the Kindle Fire, and I've found that none of them realize that with a standard Android tablet, you can buy and read Kindle ebooks, Nookbooks, Google books, to name the three largest. I have access to everything save iBooks.
Which brings to my big Apple gripe. iPad has Kindle and Nook support as well, but no purchasing within the apps. It's severely crippled.
more tar
I didn’t know there’s a new KF out that will do that. Gotta get one. Maybe at Christmas.
The kindle fire hd has a mini hdmi socket so you hook it up directly to your TV for playing movies. I have a Fire . Now I have to hook up my laptop to TV to watch the streaming video TV/movies. i’M going to buy a 7” Fire Hd after Christmas . I’ll wait a few months for them to patch the bugs. The iPad is too big for comfortable use IMHO .
You can load books available from such places as guttenburg.org and many videos on to the kindle fire via USB cable. Piece of cake
My point was that standard android tablets have native apps for Kindle, Nook, Google, Blio, Watts, etc. Full functioning apps (unlike the iPad) that let you purchase and read the books within the app, just as though it were a Kindle or a Nook.
The bookstore has unsustainable overhead in the form of retail locations and retail employees. Walmart and Target are not carrying the Kindle because they don’t want to contribute to their own demise. Amazon has the new business model that works for consumer goods.
They are leaching off of the retail infrastructure in the form of show rooming. Retailers should respond by blocking the cell signals in their stores...not facilitating it.
Consumers can now effectively shop nationwide at any time which does a lot to destroy the profit model. Some people might think “what’s the big deal, so a few CEO’s have to drink a few less bottles of Dom”... the reality is that those profits are crucial in down markets.
Retailers are responding by lobbying Congress to enforce internet taxes on online retailers. This will swing the pendulum back the other way for a little while, but the reality is that the age of the American retailer is largely over.
Big box / distribution giants like Walmart will sell everything. Because the individual consumer will no longer pay $50 for something they can get in digital for $25, those jobs are going to get displaced. Those people will have to work somewhere down the line or become wards of the state...long story short, you are going to pay for them one way or the other...sorry for the rant.
This may be a stupid question: If you have an iPad do you need a Kindle? Thanks...
It depends on what you want to do.
If you want the best eReader for books, get the kindle touch. If you want to have access to the internet (and apps?) too, then the iPad.
I have a tablet and an eInk reader. The tablet floats around the house as a general factotum, ready to pay bills, look up recipes, or entertain me as I load the dishwasher. By nightfall the battery is nearly dead and it goes on the charging stand to act as alarm clock, and alternate television for me when my husband watches a late sports game in the bedroom.
The reader generally lives in my purse for whenever I can snatch reading time while out and about. It charges for maybe half an hour at a time in the car, when I think about it, and it’s never died on me.
I do that all the time, I will see a book I like in Walmart but I will grab my Android Galaxy phone, hit the one click order at Amazon and its bought and paid for in seconds, and downloaded to either my puter by the Cloud Server, my smartphone or both of my Kindles.
And I often check to see what filter I need by my phone because WM has crap for telling you what those new Purolater filters fit.
—— “Showrooming” I like that. -——
Retail will never go away, but we may live to see retailers charging admission to see products also available on-line.
Nothing will keep women out of their favorite stores, and guys would view it as a cost of doing business.
I preview stuff at Lowes all the time, and I’d pay a $2 cover.
I always checked the reviews of each seller on what I buy from Amazon (clicking through Ebates of course) Have never had a problem with anything - yet. Amazon has always had fast shipping from all the sellers and from Amazon itself - super fast. I love shopping online. Hate having to walk through store after store and not ending up finding what I want anyway PLUS living in a smallish town stores are limited.
Depends what you want to use it for. Like I said, I only wanted something for reading. So I got the Kindle Touch. The iPad does so much more so you can’t really compare the two. The Kindle Fire is more like an iPad.
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