In the latest is a series of significant culls for the supermarket chain since Dave Lewis took over as CEO last September, it was announced yesterday that Tesco's Blinkbox Books e-book service would be closing, following a failed sale to Waterstones. Tesco failed to reach an agreement with the book retailer, despite entering into a number of serious talks, with a spokesperson for the chain, which was, until recently, the largest supermarket brand in the UK, saying the talks with Waterstones had “Failed to reach a positive outcome.” They declined to go into exact financial details regarding the talks, but did go on to say that Tesco has “Taken the decision to close Blinkbox Books by the end of February.”
It was announced yesterday that Tesco's Blinkbox Books e-book service would be closing, following a failed sale to Waterstones
The statement adds that, whilst they have “Learnt a lot since launching the service,” and saw “Encouraging levels of take up,” they feel that they can do more for their customers by focusing the core our core business. Tesco recently managed to sell its Blinkbox Movies business to TalkTalk for an estimated £25 million, but it transpires they were not quite as fortunate when they came to their e-book business, which failed to take off when compared to similar services offered by Amazon et al. The service is less than a year old, having launched last March after Tesco acquired Mobcast for £4.5 million. In 10 months, the service managed to bring in just 100,000 registered users and £70,000 worth of sales, culminating in a pre-tax loss of £2 million for the year. Needless to say, redundancies are expected.
Tesco had more joy with their music platform, Blinkbox Music yesterday, as it confirmed a sale to rivals Guvera
Whilst Blinkbox Books is no more, however, Tesco had more joy with their music platform, Blinkbox Music yesterday, as it confirmed a sale (for an as yet undisclosed sum) to rivals Guvera. BlinkBox Music currently holds around 2.5 million users with over 100 million streams a month, making it a much more successful venture than it's e-book sibling. Guvera likely made the purchase as a means of expanding into Western Europe. It is also the worldwide partner of electronics brand Lenovo, and boasts licensing deals with the likes of Universal Music Group, Warner and Sony. Like Spotify and other similar services, it operates a free ad-funded service and a subscription service. Financial terms of the deal have yet to be obtained, but it's thought the service was acquired debt free.
These are just the latest is a series of significant culls for the supermarket chain since Dave Lewis took over as CEO last September
Guvera's global chief operating officer Michael de Vere called the acquisition “An important new chapter in the Guvera story,” which will add significant firepower to the platform, “Both in terms of technical expertise and an established and loyal audience in the UK.” Phil Quartararo, chief content officer and president of Guvera USA, adds that he believes “Looking broadly at where great technology is coming from, London is firmly the place to be,” going so far as to call it “The Silicon Valley for music streaming.” The sale of Blinkbox Music and the closure of Blinkbox Books means that Tesco's Blinkbox experiment has now finally come to an end.
