Walmart moves into E-readers with Rakuten partnership: Belated but still a statement of intent

The world's biggest retailer is determined to catch up with Amazon and is spending big with that aim in mind

Walmart's traditional stores are its strength, but it has been making moves online (REUTERS)

Ten years after Amazon launched the Kindle, Walmart is finally launching into E-readers via a partnership with Japanese online marketplance Rakuten.

With Ebook revenues in decline, that might look kind of sad, unless you look at the wider picture.

This deal will also see the expansion of the online delivery service offered by the group in Japan, where it has had its struggles. It is just one of a string of moves the company has been making.

Walmart might have been very slow to respond to the rise of its rival but the sleeping giant - which had more than three times Amazon's sales in 2016 - has been showing signs over the last couple of years that it has finally woken up to the challenge it faces.

Just as Amazon has been moving into bricks and mortar - last year’s $13.7bn purchase of Whole Foods frightened the life out of grocers around the world - Walmart is becoming a rising force online.

It paid $3bn in cash plus up to $300m more in shares for Jet.com, an online retailer, eighteen months or so ago, just one among a string of purchases the company has made.

An attraction of Jet was the Amazon competitor’s younger, and more affluent, customer base when compared to Walmart’s.

Of more importance even than that to Walmart, however, was getting its mitts on Marc Lore, who’d ironically sold an earlier start up, Quidsi, to Amazon for $550m.

Following that latter deal Lore said that despite hitting the jackpot with he, his family, and multiple generations yet unborn, set for life he felt a sense “of mourning”. He got depressed, and complained of a lack of purpose in his life.

It’s hard to imagine anything more irritating than a whiny gazillionaire, but this is a surprisingly common reaction among entrepreneurs after they sell up. Money doesn’t seem to buy happiness for those that dedicate their lives to making it.

Lore didn’t spend long whinging, however. Instead he went out and started Jet. After its sale he sensibly stuck around with the purchaser, where he is serving as the head of E-commerce.

The appiontment seems to be paying off. Quarterly online sales at the giant have been growing at a rapid pace, at 50 per cent, 60 per cent, and more, each time it reports.

The Rakuten deal might not be an especially big one. By selling Kobo Walmart is shooting for a slice of a shrinking pie. More important, however, is what this says about its continued intent and commitment. Long absent as regards online, it is now very real.

Amazon has presented retailers with three options: Accommodate, fight, or die. With Walmart’s choice of the second it has become George Foreman facing Mohammed Ali. That was a hell of a fight.