Walmart and Rakuten Kobo partnered in 2018 to sell e-readers in over 1,000 US locations and online. As soon as this partnership was established, Walmart launched Walmart ebooks, where users who bought an e-reader from Walmart could buy ebooks through them. There was a dedicated Walmart ebooks app for Android and iOS that made things easier. Right off the bat, things were rocky. Kobo expected a US retail giant to have e-readers for people to try before buying. Many locations did not stock e-readers; the ones who did often had dead batteries and were never charged. Nobody was trained on the e-readers and couldn’t answer simple questions. It looks like the partnership might be on the verge of being dead.
The co-branded Kobo and Walmart ebook apps were pulled from all major app stores a while ago, and if you have it installed, it no longer works. The Walmart ebook landing page is gone, and there is a redirect to the Rakuten Kobo website. US residents who logged in to their Kobo account with their Walmart credentials were greeted by a message today saying the partnership had ended, with little details on why this occurred.
Here is how the partnership worked. When you purchase a Kobo from Walmart, Kobo will fulfill the books, and Walmart will get a cut of each transaction. When digital content was delivered, the customer got an email from Walmart. This made it easy for Walmart to make money; you sell an e-reader once and create recurring revenue for the lifetime of that device. Kobo has similar partnerships with international distributors.
Walmart continues to sell Kobo e-readers in their online store but has not sold them in their retail stores as of 2020. It remains to be seen if Walmart will continue to sell Kobo e-readers for much longer, and if this is the case, Kobo will have to look for a more agreeable retail partner.
I have contacted Rakuten Kobo for a comment on the ending of the partnership and to get some context. I will update this post when I hear back.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.