Best Buy will be closing all of its 250 mobile phone stores in the US by end of May, says sales from the mobile stores account for ~1% of company revenue
The electronics retailer, which will close all 250 Mobile stores by the end of May, said operating the small stores cost more than big-box locations
Context & Ripple Effects
Best Buy's Mobile chain was the last big bet on small-format phone retail, and it closes three years after RadioShack filed for bankruptcy and sold off most of its 4,000 stores, with Sprint stepping in to co-brand hundreds of the survivors. The pattern since has been one-way: GameStop announced at least 150 closures in 2017, and Bose would later pull out of owned retail entirely.
The economics here are unusually clean — the 250 stores generate about 1% of revenue while costing more to operate per location than Best Buy's big-box footprint — so this is a rational pruning rather than distress, and it foreshadows the deeper cuts that came when [[a:963625|Best Buy laid off 5,000 workers and closed more stores as online sales headed toward 40% of revenue]].
First-order effects
- Staff across 250 Mobile stores face closure by end of May, with phone sales folded into nearby big-box locations that already cost less to run.
Second-order effects
- Carriers lose an independent third-party retail channel for phones and plans, repeating the squeeze RadioShack's collapse put on Sprint, which had to buy shelf space through co-branding instead.
Third-order effects
- Small-format consumer-electronics retail looks structurally unviable in the US: between RadioShack, GameStop, Bose, and now Best Buy Mobile, every attempt to sell gadgets from sub-big-box footprints has ended in contraction, pushing the category toward fewer large stores plus e-commerce.
The trend: US consumer-electronics retail is consolidating around big-box and online channels, with dedicated small-format gadget stores exiting the market one chain at a time.