The Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) buyout of Jet.com for $3.3 billion gets it a very modest expansion of e-commerce, little more than any of its efforts in the past.
Wal-Mart does not get branded consumer electrics with Jet.com, like Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) Kindle or the Fire line-up of products. Most importantly, the deal does not gain Wal-Mart anything to measure against the huge and powerful marketing machine of Amazon Prime, with its combination of special price deals, streaming video, free shipping music and free personal storage.
Wal-Mart needs a large branded streaming video service. The most logical target is Hulu.
Wal-Mart does have a nearly invisible video service called Vudu. It offers streaming video, DVDs and Blu-rays. The service, which Wal-Mart bought in 2010, has been a failure. Whatever Wal-Mart paid was an overpayment.
Hulu is among the most well-known streaming platforms in America. Hulu has just announced it will offer content only by paid subscription. It is jointly owned by media powerhouses Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. (NASDAQ: FOXA), Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX). Hulu’s revenue is over $1.6 billion, and it has about 10 million subscribers.
If Hulu is going to continue to grow rapidly, it probably needs a large owner with a huge customer base and unlimited funds to invest in subscriber additions. It cannot effectively compete with Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) without the advantages. Wal-Mart has both the customer base and the money. Hulu has the brand name.
Most of all, Wal-Mart needs to compete effectively with Amazon in e-commerce. The buyout of Jet.com barely gets it further along. A video competitor to Prime is essential, if Wal-Mart wants a full deck of e-commerce services, or any tool to close the gap with Amazon, even a little.
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