The Kobo Forma has only been available for a few days, but the main Walmart website in the United States says it is already sold out. Walmart only sells the Forma on their website, they do not carry it on a retail level.
It is hard to say exactly why Walmart is already sold out of the Forma e-Reader. I believe that they were not allocated a significant amount of devices. Kobo primarily drives hardware sales from existing vendors that have been carrying Kobo products for seven or eight years. This includes Chapters Indigo in Canada, FNAC in France and BOL.com in the Netherlands and the main Kobo website.
Kobo just started to do business with Walmart just a few months ago, as the company is trying to break into the US market. The entire rollout has been full of trials and tribulations. A high percentage of the 1,000 stores that sell e-readers only carry the Aura, and less than half actually have a display unit setup. Customer service personal are not trained in Kobo products and have no idea how they work. I have seen hundreds of pictures readers have sent me about their local Walmart and how the audiobook and ebook gift card section is a barren wasteland. Things are sold and not restocked, or not even stocked to begin with.
Walmart is also sold out of the Kobo Clara HD, which came out earlier this year. This is no estimated date on when either of these two e-readers will be available to purchase.
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.
