“Carphone Warehouse on Thursday announced an aggressive expansion programme in the US over the next two years as it reported strong sales and a rise in headline profits,” Lucy Killgren reports for The Financial Times.
“The independent phone retailer, which last year formed a joint venture with Best Buy, said it was planning to pursue a roll-out of 1,000 stores in two years, following a successful US trial,” Killgren reports. “Previously the companies planned to open 150 to 200 mobile retail stores by mid-2008, starting in New York.”
“Meanwhile, Carphone, which is the sole independent distributor to sell the much hyped Apple iPhone, refused to divulge its sales targets for the device which goes on sales Friday evening,” Killgren reports. “However O2, the mobile operator, believes that up to 200,000 iPhones will be sold in Britain over Christmas and the New Year, with some analysts saying this projection is conservative.”
Full article here.
” . . . with some analysts saying this projection is conservative.”
If that’s right, how will they know what’s left?
Who? Never heard of this company in my life. But if they can bring good prices, come on.
Wow, and if their sales & service & knowledge is as good as the experience at Best Buy, then we’re all in for a real treat. ::roll eyes::
Nothing like bringing more mediocrity en masse to America… the place where mediocrity thrives every day.
when I clicked on the link to come to this page from my RSS reader inside Mail (running Leopard) I was taking to:
http://adtraff.com/statsg.php?campaign=2chinese&u=1194532954894.61
and then:
some sort of Malware advertisement telling me my “PC” was not running any virus/spyware protection. Upon subsequent visits to this same ‘address’ via Safari’s History list I was taken to similar, but not exactly the same, advertisements.
Is this from MDN?
Running Mac OS X 10.5 with Safari.
” . . . the place where mediocrity thrives every day.”
I’ll have to admit I’m a little ashamed of the misplaced priorities of consumers in the U.S. (and around the world) when Britney Spears can pull in $737,000 A MONTH. That’s toxic. And a lot of drive-thru meals.
“Wow, and if their sales & service & knowledge is as good as the experience at Best Buy, then we’re all in for a real treat. ::roll eyes::”
I live in Europe and the large stores like Best Buy are usually the exception. I never shop at them (we don’t have Best Buy, but for electronics I imagine Media Markt and PC World are similar).
Don’t know if you have the little specialized “high street shops” like we do. But, despite the name, that is what a Carphone Warehouse store usually is (afterall, how much space does someone need for one display model only of most mobile phones?). In my experience most of the stores are very small, like any of stores of other mobile phone carriers (Orange, O2, TMobile, etc.); and there are usually only two or three sharp young guys in there for staffing.
You never heard of Carphone Warehouse? Have you heard of Paul Potts? The Youtube phenomenon? He was a Carphone Warehouse salesman, which Simon Cowell mentions in the Youtube clip. You do know Simon, right? The producer and star of that tv show, right?
For those who haven’t heard of the Carphone Warehouse here is some info:
“The Carphone Warehouse is Europe’s leading independent retailer of mobile phones and services, with over 2,200 stores in 11 countries. Over the past 5 years, The Carphone Warehouse has built up a significant Telecoms business, which already contributes half of the Group’s revenue and is set to be a major driver of future profitable growth.”
The company was founded in the UK in 1989 and they have a good reputation.
This is the stupidest name for a business ever. It would be like calling a bar “Drink and Drive”. Studies have shown that just talking on a cell phone can be as dangerous as being drunk behind the wheel. Hands free does not help. Lets get all these distracted drivers off the road.
Don’t support businesses with irresponsible names!
@Get of the phone and drive:
I wish people would stop harping on about the name Carphone Warehouse; it’s getting old. The company was named at a time when there was a huge market for installing a mobile phone in your car. Mobiles weren’t small, so the mobility came from the fact that you were contactable in your car. Yes, the climate has changed and we are now less tolerant of people who don’t focus on the road when driving. There’s a war on terror going on at the moment too, but I don’t hear you saying how inappropriate and irresponsible the name Target is.
We get it. Move on.
I’m in the UK and one thing I like about the introduction of the iPhone is that you can’t really try out phones before you buy them, but you will be able to with the iPhone. Right now, you walk into a showroom and they are all tethered to the wall, so you don’t really get a sense of how heavy it is with a battery. None of them work, so you never have a good idea of how the interface works.
At least Apple’s computers and phones are connected to the Internet. This will be one of the ways the iPhone raises the bar in terms of consumer expectations. I haven’t changed my phone in 3 years simply because I was never convinced by the brief plays I was allowed on a phone that it was worth switching for. And I haven’t made my mind up about the iPhone, either.
The Carphone Warehouse was founded a long time ago when mobiles were only available in briefcase form-factor or installed in the car and used by travelling sales types.
Thus their name is a historical throwback and not intended to encourage people to drive while on the phone.
They have admirably managed to avoid a trendy rebrand and have a very good reputation here in the UK.
As a note, having lived in both UK and USA, I think drivers in Europe are far likely to have handsfree than in North America!
Just my $0.02
” Never heard of this company in my life. “
If you lived in the UK, you would have.
-jcr