Wal-Mart makes electronics assault on Best Buy official

Wal-Mart confirmed plans to bolster its electronics selection in a move to grab the void left by Circuit City before Best Buy grabs it all.

Confirming a Wall Street Journal report on Monday, Wal-Mart issued a statement on its grand electronics plan across its 3,500 stores. In a nutshell, Wal-Mart is gussying up its stores with new signs, better displays and more products. It will add a hi-def area, tout Blu-ray players and movies and offer more HDTVs.

In addition, Wal-Mart will push more wireless products and laptops from the likes of HP, Dell and Toshiba. Specifically, Wal-Mart set up some interesting products for its big launch. To wit:

• It'll offer Dell's Studio One 19 All-in-One touchscreen desktop exclusively in June;
• Expand its Acer netbook lineup;
• Stump for the Sony E-Reader setting up an interesting distribution war with Amazon's Kindle;
• And trying to ride the wireless wave. Wal-Mart will expand distribution for the BlackBerry Bold and Storm with AT&T and Verizon Wireless, respectively. Wal-Mart will also push the Pre.

Best Buy management has said on recent conference calls that competition from Wal-Mart is nothing new. We'll find out whether that's true in future quarters. Given that Wal-Mart has been gaining customers amid the recession I wouldn't be so quick to write these efforts off.