Walmart has gone past Amazon and Sony to become one of the largest providers of movies online in the US, according to a report by media research firm IHS Screen Digest.
The retail company is now in direct competition with Apple’s iTunes store, according to the report.
According to a report by The Financial Times, Walmart is now the largest seller of DVDs in the US, generating $3.5bn in revenues last year.
Last year, Walmart acquired an online film store Vudu, which has grown 4.3% this year from
1% in the first half of 2010, said the IHS Screen Digest report. Recently, Walmart launched its Vudu service for iPad users.
The report author Arash Amel says that Walmart scrapped its grwoth off Sony’s market share.
Amel said, "The Sony PlayStation store fell out of the top three rankings chiefly because [of] Vudu."
"The global security breach that shut down Sony’s online gaming operations during the first half had a deleterious impact on the PlayStation store’s business."
This year in April, Sony witnessed one of the biggest hack attacks in online history which shut down its PSN for more than a month.
