blinkboxTesco has followed through on widespread predictions, and followed the sale of its Blinkbox video service and telecoms provider platform with the disposal of its other Blinkbox-branded online media ventures, including Blinkbox books. Tesco has sold its streaming music service, Blinkbox Music, to Australian streaming platform Guvera, as detailed in an announcement, which states that: “The acquisition of blinkbox Music will help significantly accelerate the growth of Guvera’s business.  Leveraging blinkbox Music’s deep technical, product, marketing and content expertise will allow Guvera to expand into Western Europe faster.”

The Bookseller, meanwhile, quoted a Tesco spokesperson saying that the Blinkbox Books service would simply be closed, although declining to confirm that talks with Waterstones to sell off the platform had failed. Exactly what will become of existing customers and their ebook purchases hasn’t been confirmed. In fact, Tesco has not yet officially announced the decision on its own site – its last tech-related release on its website at the time of writing concerns the development of a Tesco app tailored to the Google Glass, which itself has now been withdrawn from sale. And still no word on the fate of the Tesco Hudl 2, a far better-received tech offering. But if the software platform it was supposed to be a gateway for has now closed, can the gateway device itself continue on its own?

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