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According to Bloomberg Amazon is in talks to buy some of RadioShack's stores:
Amazon has considered using the RadioShack stores as showcases for the Seattle-based company’s hardware, as well as potential pickup and drop-off centers for online customers, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the deliberations are private.
RadioShack is on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, and according to other reports, it has also been in talks with wireless carrier Sprint about selling some of its stores. The deal with Amazon may not happen, but nonetheless, it shows where Amazon is headed.
To head off competition from Wal-Mart—one of the few retailers that could pose a legitimate threat to Amazon—and to expand its operation, the company has adopted a new hybrid business model, combining e-commerce with offline services.
Originally spotted at Wired, and also linked at HackerNews.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by urza9814 on Wednesday February 04 2015, @07:34PM
Yup, most of the purchases at my local RS seem to be cellphones...but there's two dedicated cellphone stores right in the same plaza! Those stores are bigger and 100% devoted to phones; RS is tiny and only a small portion of that is phones. How did they hope to compete in that market? They'd probably need to close some of their stores either way, but at least if they had focused on the hobbyist electronics they could have *completely* owned that market across most of the country. And they charge $2+ for a cardboard sleeve of 5 resistors -- resistors worth less than a cent each, probably less than a cent for all five -- so I'm sure they make damn good margins on those components too.