The investment community is patting Walmart on the head
today for booting Amazon’s line of Kindle devices out of its 10,000 stores. The
Kindle, the conventional wisdom has it, is a “Trojan horse” that converts
flesh-and-blood Walmart into web surfers who do their shopping via Amazon’s
vast online marketplace. As FORBES contributor Tim Worstall puts it, “After
all, who really wants to aid their direct competitors?”
The answer is no one, of course. But let’s take a closer
look at the cost/benefit of this decision. There’s no doubt that the flow of
consumer dollars from bricks-and-mortar retail to digital retail helps Amazon,
which dominates e-commerce, and hurts Walmart, which has had trouble getting
its own e-commerce efforts off the ground.
But dropping the Kindle isn’t going to halt that trend. It
probably won’t even slow it perceptibly….
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