Carphone Warehouse partners with Best Buy to enter the U.S. handset market
By Dusan Belic on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 12:11 PM PST In General
Right from the other side of the Atlantic, Carphone Warehouse is preparing to move overseas. The well known phone retailer, which currently has 2300 stores across Europe, is partnering with Best Buy to launch 1,000 retail locations in the USA. Some of them will be boutique shops inside of Best Buy stores, while some other will be stand-alone stores.
The entrance of Carphone Warehouse could impact the U.S. handset market dramatically. In Britain, the retail chain revolutionized the industry by being the first seller of phones and mobile services not affiliated with any carrier or handset maker, allowing consumers to compare prices and service plans from many providers. Will they repeat their success in the U.S.? Something tells me, they will. Best Buy is also confident — at the moment they hold 3% stake in the handset retailer and the plan is to increase the stake. We’ll watch this space closely…
[Via: BusinessWeek, MobileBurn]
Competition is always good for the consumer. Let’s just hope that Carphone Warehouse US won’t become like any other mobile dealer…once they get you to sign up and collect their commission from the network, they wash their hands away and don’t want to have anything to do with you. In the US I’ve found that the corporate stores (at least in T-Mobile’s case) are always much better than independent dealers although with corp stores you’re limited to only the “official” phones where the dealers quite often offer other devices as well (unsibsidized though).