Vizio TV has been around for a long time. The company started off as a very budget oriented brand, and frankly, their first TVs were pretty bad. It took them several years but they managed to reposition themselves as a competitor to LG and Samsung, but over recent years, Vizio TV seems to be struggling.
While the company does still offer both higher end and budget options, companies like Hisense and TCL have been making better products and pushing Vizio TV off the scene. So when we heard that Walmart is looking to acquire Vizio TV, that made us do a double take.
I can’t imagine Walmart continuing to manufacturer higher end TVs. I suspect they will mass produce the lower cost TVs and make a good gross from those sales. But even more than that, Engadget points out; “It would also give Walmart access to all of that sweet, sweet customer data collected by Vizio’s smart TV platform throughout the years, which would open up another revenue stream in the form of personalized ads. The company would also be able to sell user data collected by Vizio boxes. Finally, it could use Vizio TVs as ad space in the showrooms of its nearly 11,000 retail locations. The company’s already doing this with display televisions via its current in-house brand, Onn.”
Walmart used to own the streaming platform Vudu, which they sold to Fandango. While apps like Vudu do collect a fair share of data, an actual piece of hardware with multiple data collecting apps is far superior for data mining.
