What Happened to Best Buy Mobile?
🔒 Fate: Standalone mall stores closed in 2018; mobile departments continued inside full-line Best Buy stores.
Best Buy Mobile was a mall-format phone shop that peaked during the smartphone boom. After opening in 2006, the stores were designed to be smaller than traditional Best Buy stores, and specialized solely in mobile devices, helping customers set up their phones before leaving the store.
Ultimately, Best Buy Mobile couldn't carve out enough of a footprint that separated it from its parent Best Buy stores, or other stores and products that were arriving on the market.
Best Buy Mobile stores were a tiny footprint in the company's overall sales and real estate locations - approximately 1 percent each. Combined with the fact that most mobile shops were in close proximity to big-box Best Buy stores, the decision to consolidate seemed inevitable.
Timeline
- 2006
Best Buy partners with Carphone Warehouse to build a dedicated mobile retail concept.
- 2007
Rapid U.S. rollout follows as part of Best Buy Mobile expansion
- 2010
Peak footprint across malls and small formats during the smartphone upgrade cycle.
- 2015
Profitability tightens as traffic shifts online and to carrier-owned stores
- 2018
Best Buy closes of all ~250 U.S. standalone Best Buy Mobile stores; mobile departments remain inside big-box stores.
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