Tesco is giving up on its e-book selling service Blinkbox Books.
The retailer did not manage to secure a deal with Waterstones for the sale of its e-book business and will be shutting the service down in the coming weeks.
Tesco has been effortlessly trying to find buyers for its loss-making digital download service Blinkbox.
However the e-book arm of Blinkbox failed to attract any buyers.
The British retailer did manage to sell off Blinkbox Movies and Blinkbox Music though.
It sold Blinkbox Movies to TalkTalk for around £25 million. TalkTalk said that the acquisition is highly complementary to its existing strategy of being the best value for money TV provider in the country.
Blinkbox Music was acquired by Guvera on January 26 for £5 million (less than half the £12 million Tesco originally paid when it was known as We7).
A Blinkbox spokesperson said:
“We have taken the decision to close our eBook service Blinkbox Books. We’ve learnt a lot since launching the service and whilst we saw encouraging levels of take up, we believe that we can do more for our customers by focusing on our core business. The service will close by the end of February.”
Tesco launched Blinkbox Books after buying the digital book service Mobcast for £4.5 million in September 2012.
Even though the service has 100,000 registered users, it posted a pre-tax loss of £2 million on sales of only £70,000.
Earlier this month Tesco plc. announced that it will be closing 43 unprofitable stores across the UK, many of them local convenience shops, as well as its telecoms units and its headquarters in Cheshunt.
