Wal-Mart to stop selling Kindles and other Amazon-branded products

The nation’s largest retailer has cut out the nation’s largest e-tailer.

Wal-Mart has announced it will stop selling Kindles and other Amazon.com-branded products after it sells out of its existing stock.

Here’s the entirety of Wal-Mart’s statement on the change:

“Recently, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. made a business decision to not carry current Amazon products beyond our purchase commitments and existing inventory.

Our customers trust us to provide a broad assortment of products at everyday low prices, and we approach each merchandising decision through this lens.

We will continue to offer our customers a broad assortment of tablets, e-readers and accessories at a variety of great price points. This decision is consistent with our overall merchandising strategy.�

Reuters was first with the news.

The Wal-Mart decision follows a similar move in May by rival Target, with that discount chain saying it “continually evaluates its product assortment� and would phase out Amazon-branded products in the spring of 2012.

Amazon did not return a call for comment.

Wal-Mart will still carry devices including the Apple iPad, Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Barnes & Noble Nook.

Although the retail behemoth wasn’t specific about its reasons for getting rid of the popular Kindle family, Wal-Mart might be worried about losing sales of physical media, such as DVDs and books, as consumers use their Kindles to stream movies and download e-books from Amazon directly. And the two companies also compete heavily for sales of non-electronics products, with analysts saying Amazon consistently offers shoppers lower prices across several categories.

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