Wal-Mart yesterday revealed its video-streaming service which saw the video-streaming wars heating up. Renting of HD movies on the spot directly on the web was allowed for those who wanted to avail this service. The medium between Wal-Mart and a consumer would be Vudu who had last year earned the title of a retail giant. It is being said that this service was launched in response to Netflix. This reply from Wal-Mart looks to overpower the future prospects of Netflix according to Janney Montgomery Scott’s stock analyst Tony Wible.
Netflix has the lead currently as it jumped up to grab the opportunity before Wal-Mart came up with its service, but in the times to come the market is going to be competitive. This would be an added disadvantage as there would be a few competitors who would not aim at making profits majorly.
Talking about the giants in the related fields, Google and Apple might even be threatening for Netflix as these giants have an eye to pop up the opportunity to make an expansion to this section too. Google and Apple are in a bid to get hold of Hulu.com, which is a TV and online movie provider. Threats are in fact even being faced from Amazon.com who has partnered CBS, so that the partnership can provide Amazon.com with network’s library of programming.
On the monetary terms, the renting is accurately ranged from 99 cents which would go up to a maximum of 5.99 USD. These movies rented can be streamed by users at Walmart.com and then they can watch it on their PlayStation video game console and Blue-Ray player along with an option to view them on PCs and TV. Netflix, earlier this month had made an announcement that the new customers would get a package for streaming services and bundle of DVD which would cost them ten dollars, but later on a price hike of six dollars left users fuming and the results showed that Netflix’s stock value had declined by 10%. as against these competitors, Hulu’s premium service is offered for 7.99 USD on a monthly basis.
Netflix, after its decline in stock value told investors that they do not like to upset their subscribers, but they have been providing excellent service and they look forward to only improve their service for the coming quarter by improving the range of the content which would be streamed as well as the quality.
Talking about the quickness of Wal-Mart, they would give their users a huge number of movies to select from and it would even include the movie list as soon as the movie’s DVD is out in stores. However Wal-Mart lacks the advantageous subscription which is offered by Netflix. This point might just give the required edge to Netflix to have a better stand against Wal-Mart.
Vudu had been acquired by Wal-Mart 18 months back and since then there was only an option for users to either buy Blue-Ray discs or DVDs physically from their website which is Walmart.com. This is however not the first time Wal-Mart has attempted to get into this processing. Back in 2003 there was a subscription service which was launched by Wal-Mart which was more or less similar to what Netflix offer now. But that was unfortunately a sad extension for Wal-Mart as it could not get major success and the retail chain was shut down. Wal-Mart would hope that history wouldn’t haunt them this time and success would be in their hands for this service.