Has Wal-Mart Lost Its Technology Edge?

from the every-day-low...-whoops dept

Chris Lindquist writes "Despite the late Sam Walton's self-proclaimed distrust of computers, Wal-Mart has long seen itself as a technology leader. The company was an early adopter of bar-code scanning and eventually established the gold standard for supply chain efficiency thanks to highly integrated point-of-sale systems, satellite-communicated inventories and even RFID tracking. But Wal-Mart seems recently to have lost some of its tech luster. Questionable business decisions and global economic realities have caused the retail giant's earnings to stumble while aggressive competitors such as Target match Wal-Mart's every tech move--and sell higher-margin products to more affluent customers. Now it's unclear whether the command-and-control, technology-enabled culture that allowed Wal-Mart to flourish will be able to help it maintain its market dominance."

Filed Under: rfid
Companies: wal-mart

Piecemeal DRM-Free Efforts Aren't Going To Unseat Apple's Online Music Dominance

from the keep-trying dept

Universal Music announced a couple weeks back that it would begin selling DRM-free music -- but not through the iTunes Music Store, in a bid to undermine Apple's dominance in online music sales. As we pointed out, this wasn't likely to happen, since few people shop for music according to what label it's on, particularly when it's a huge one like Universal. The label now says that its unprotected tracks will be available from a few different sources: a new service called Gbox, and through Wal-Mart's online music store. Both will undercut Apple's price for DRM-free tracks by selling them for 99 and 94 cents respectively, but that's hardly likely to make a difference, particularly in attracting iPod users, nor will it help their businesses since the margins on digital music are already pretty thin. The problem remains that most people don't pay attention to what label their favorite performers are on. Saying "we sell DRM-free songs from Universal/EMI artists" isn't going to have much of an impact in getting people to switch from iTunes, but it does seem to illustrate that labels and other retailers are looking to compete with iTunes on this front, which should be good news for consumers. Still, the iTunes Music Store's dominance will remain until another retailer can somehow convince all the major labels and a wide array of indies to let it sell DRM-free music. As long as Apple's rivals can only use a piecemeal approach to get music they sell onto iPods, it's going to be a long, fruitless, uphill battle. Competing with iTunes on price is only part of the equation. Rivals have to also match its selection; then they have to worry about matching its ease of use as well.

Filed Under: drm, music
Companies: apple, emi, gbox, universal, wal-mart

Wal-Mart Tries Social Networking Again... But This Time With An Actual Social Network

from the well,-that's-better dept

You may recall (or, actually, probably not) that last year around this time, Wal-Mart decided to launch its very own social network as a back-to-school promotion, except it took out all the fun parts of social networking, and then put in fake kids who talked about the clothes they were buying at Wal-Mart. It was either entirely ignored or mocked by the few who came across it. After a few months, the experiment was quietly abandoned -- and almost no one noticed. This year, Wal-Mart is back in the social networking game, but at least they've realized that rather than copying the hot trend of the year, it might be better to embrace the leader. To that end, the company is launching a Facebook group to try to get college kids heading back to school to "design your dorm room together." It's still a bit cheesy, and may not attract too many users, but at least the company finally realized it needed to go where the real kids were actually hanging out. Maybe next year the company will realize that it helps to have an application that's actually fun or useful as well.

Filed Under: back to school, social networks
Companies: facebook, wal-mart

Wal-Mart Is Latest To Offer A Cut-Rate Computer

from the cheap-enough? dept

As Wal-Mart continues its push into consumer electronics, the company has announced plans to sell a stripped down Windows PC at a discount price. While it will run Vista, the rest of the software will be open source (Open Office will be pre-installed instead of Microsoft Office), and, perhaps surprisingly, it will be completely free of crapware, an issue that's been getting a lot of attention lately. There are a number of problems, however. The box won't have much processing power, which is really bad news, considering the demands of Vista. Furthermore, this basic concept has been tried many times before. While it seems appealing, in theory, to completely strip down a computer and sell it at a discount, consumers have never really jumped at the idea. Name brand machines can be had so cheaply, much of the time, that there really isn't much value as there would first seem in Wal-Mart's approach.

Filed Under: electronics, retail
Companies: wal-mart