Best Buy Plans More U.S. Mobile Stores
RICHFIELD, Minn. (
) --
Best Buy
(BBY) - Get Best Buy Co., Inc. Report
plans to open hundreds more of its new small mobile stores as it looks to gain a significant market share of the increasing demand for smartphones and other handheld devices, the
Financial Times
reports.
The retailer expects to have a "number somewhere between here and 1,000" of Best Buy Mobile stores in shopping malls across the U.S., in addition to the 77 it has already opened, CEO Brian Dunn told the newspaper.
Dunn said that small mall-based stores were attracting new customer traffic, in spite of being located within two miles of larger Best Buy stand-alone stores. "Typically this consumer is female ... a mom with a couple of kids. These are incremental connections we are making," he told the
Financial Times
.
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Best Buy launched its mobile initiative in 2008, with support from its U.K. ally
Carphone Warehouse
. The retailer is taking aim at both
Wal-mart
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and
RadioShack (RSH)
, estimated to have around one-third and a quarter of the market, respectively.
Best Buy currently holds about 4% of market share, up from 2% in 2008. Dunn said last summer that Best Buy could eventually take 15% of the total U.S. market for mobile phones, the report adds.
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