Wal-Mart has shuttered its online movie download service it launched less than a year ago. The move follows the company’s 2005 decision to abandoned efforts to build an online DVD rental service. The world’s largest retailer instead turned its rental service over to Netflix.
A Wal-Mart spokesperson said in a statement the company closed the store after Hewlett-Packard, which provided the software running the site, "made a business decision to discontinue its video download-only merchant store service."
The move leaves Apple’s iTunes store and Amazon.com’s Unbox service as the largest providers of movie downloads (in November, AOL also scrapped its pay-for-download movie service).
Wal-Mart still operates a music download service and continues to sell CDs and DVDs at retail stores and over the Internet for shipping by mail. And remember, Wal-Mart still accounts for some 40% of all DVD sales, according to The AP.
