Amazon's Kindle Readers And Tablets Booted From Walmart Shelves

The online retail giant Amazon has a huge audience for selling their tablets and Kindle eReaders on the web, but when you don't have a storefront you'll take all the help you can get. In terms of brick and mortar stores there's only a handful of opportunities for Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD tablet — and today they're losing a big one.

Today reports are claiming that an even bigger retail giant, Wal-Mart Inc will no longer support or sell any of Amazon's line of Kindle Fire tablets or eReaders. This is a huge blow considering earlier this year Target removed them from their shelves too.

This marks the second major chain to stop offering Amazon's products, and you have to wonder why. Are they feeling threatened that Amazon offers so many of the same things they do online, and don't want to help the competition? This is what good old Wally-World had to say late last night in a memo to store management nationwide:

We have recently made the business decision to not carry Amazon tablets and eReaders beyond our existing inventory and purchase commitments," "This includes all Amazon Kindle models current and recently announced."

Obviously Walmart is one of the largest chains across America, but according to Reuters while they lead the charge in sales, their online sales are quite poor and are getting beat out by many — including Amazon. A Walmart spokeswoman said they'll continue to sell "a broad assortment" of eReaders and tablets in the future. We can't help but wonder if this is just to cut the helping hand they've been giving the competition, or if Walmart is looking to get into hardware themselves. Best Buy has Dynex and Insignia, could Walmart be preparing something of their own too?

[via Reuters]