Can Walmart Change The Way People Rent Movies?

It’s a tall order, folks, but it’s about the only way that Walmart will ever manage to wrest control of the market away from current frontrunner Netflix.  Read on.

I read a very cogent analysis of this point over at The Week, and they took the ball I set up last week where Walmart might be in the market to pick up Vudu.  The salient:

1. Vudu’s been half dead for years.

2. Walmart’s got all the cash they need to make Vudu the king of forces, but it’s not gonna be easy even with Walmart’s cash flow.

3. In order to win, Walmart’s going to have to change the way people rent movies.  :

See, the problem here is that Vudu has negotiated contracts with LG, Sanyo, Toshiba and Sharp to use Vudu as their means of streaming movies.  But now, Walmart would have to make other deals with studios for content…and they’re not going to be in a mood to make those kind of deals since they’ve just shut down Netflix and Redbox.

Now,we all know that Walmart’s power in the marketplace is huge.  But is it sufficiently huge as to work under all that counter-pressure? We’ll have to wait and see.