Wal-Mart buys App developer company Small Society in bid to dominate all facets of Mobile Experience.

Wal-Mart , the nation's largest retailer, has purchased the mobile app developer Small Society in a move to not only be able to oversee every aspect of their Mobile App development and marketing but also to dominate the market and control the mobile experience for their customers from the ground up.

This move, more than any I have seen in recent months, shows the high importance that retailers are putting on Mobile in 2012 and beyond.  Wal-Mart purchase their own App developing company! Do you think they are interested in Mobile?!

By acquiring their own App developing company,  Wal-Mart will be able to not only create better mobile experiences for customers, they will be able to control every aspect of App development in order to bring to market an App that is truly Wal-Mart branded.

Paul Cousineau, vice president of mobile products for Walmart, had this to say about the recent aquisition of Small Society. “We believe that mobile can have an impact on every part of the shopping experience for Wal-Mart customers, whether at retail stores or online".

The goal at Wal-Mart is to make the shopping process easier for their customers, whether they are planning a visit to one of their 2907 Super Centers,  navigating shelves in-store, finding more product info while shopping and, ultimately, using their mobile smart phones to make purchases.

Mobile Apps are of central importance to this goal,  and the goal of continually finding ways to bring everyday low prices to their customers.

This deal points to the importance that Wal-Mart is putting on having control over the mobile experience for its customers as opposed to sharing customers with third-party apps, which have proliferated in the past year.

This is Wal-Mart's fourth acquisition in the last year in this area and is yet another example that the major retailers (including Amazon and eBay, to name but 2) have now recognized mobile as a viable retail channel.

In April 2011 Wal-Mart acquired another California technology group, Kosmix, which had developed a platform to filter and organize material from social networking sites to present to individual users.
In Decemberof 2011 Wal-Mart.com launched a service called Shopycat that uses interests registered on Facebook to recommend products to online shoppers.

With the aquisition of Small Society Wal-Mart will be able to better mine, filter and manage data from mobile apps and gain a better understanding of what customers are responding to in mobile.

The biggest names in retail are GOING MOBILE.  Isn't it time you took YOUR Business Mobile also?

Cheers,
Mobile App Man