Wal-Mart will offer Toshiba’s HD-A2 HD-DVD player tomorrow for $98.97 as part of a “pre-Black Friday” promotion.
The price point represents a dramatic new low for Toshiba’s entry-level model, which was recently reduced to hit a suggested $250 retail and is currently being sold by Amazon.com, Circuit City and Costco for just under $200.
The HD-A2 is a closeout model that is being replaced by the more fully featured HD-A3.
Wal-Mart is also selling three HD-DVD titles for $14.96 as part of its one-day promotion.
There are some cardinal takeaways here to understand the method to Wal-mart's madness:
*In conjunction with other loony prices like a $998 50-inch Sanyo plasma, Wal-mart is effectively buying up the lowest echelons of the shopping public. Unlike Best Buy, Wal-mart has plently of high margin apparel, candy and other goods with which to make the add-on sales, so they really can make it up on volume.
*Toshiba is taking the low road to winning consumer acceptance for HD-DVD, since Blu-ray players all still start at $499 and up. But...
*This promotion tells me that Toshiba was still sitting on tons of closeout HD-A2, and were getting nervous as the rollout for new models prior to Christmas approaches. I'm sure that Toshiba was all too happy to whore out last year's stock to Wal-mart, much to the dismay of other national accounts who are still sitting on inventory.
Let the Christmas Bloodbath begin!
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