By Andrea Chang, Los Angeles Times –
LOS ANGELES — The nation’s largest retailer has cut out the nation’s largest e-tailer.
Wal-Mart has announced it will stop selling Kindles and other Amazon.com-branded products after it sells out of its existing stock.
Reuters was first with the news.
The Wal-Mart decision follows a similar move in May by rival Target, with that discount chain saying it “continually evaluates its product assortment” and would phase out Amazon-branded products in the spring of 2012.
Amazon did not return a call for comment.
Wal-Mart will still carry devices including the Apple iPad, Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Barnes & Noble Nook.
Although the retail behemoth wasn’t specific about its reasons for getting rid of the popular Kindle family, Wal-Mart might be worried about losing sales of physical media, such as DVDs and books, as consumers use their Kindles to stream movies and download e-books from Amazon directly. And the two companies also compete heavily for sales of non-electronics products, with analysts saying Amazon consistently offers shoppers lower prices across several categories.
