Best Buy Mobile announced that they are pre-selling the Verizon DROID today. The phone will be available on November 6. The DROID is the first phone on Verizon to run on the Google Android operating system. By ordering the phone through Best Buy, customers are able to avoid mail-in rebates and instant savings. Best Buy is selling the phone for $199.99 with 2 year activation.
“We’re excited to feature this new device for our consumers, as it represents the latest and greatest in mobile technology,” stated Best Buy Mobile President Shawn Score in a press release. “Bringing the DROID to Best Buy Mobile expands our already unmatched assortment of smartphones allowing customers to compare high-end devices like the iPhone 3GS, HTC Hero and DROID all under one roof. The fact that customers can purchase the phone first at Best Buy through the pre-sell is an added bonus.”
The DROID has a 3.7″ screen, 5 MP camera with autofocus and image stabilization. The camera also has dual-LED flash and DVD-quality video. The DROID is the first phone to have Google Maps Navigation.
iRex Technologies, Verizon, and Best Buy have made a partnership. Best Buy will sell the iRex DR800SG in their stores with unlimited Verizon 3G data speeds. The DR800SG will cost $399 and have an 8.1″ touchscreen.
E-books will be downloaded from the Barnes & Noble online store. The e-bookstore also has 1,100 newspapers from Newspaper Direct. The 3G connection is powered by Qualcomm Gobi radio technology. Best Buy will be selling the DR800SG next month. The e-book reader also comes with a stylus as pictured above.
As many of you know by now, our friendly rivals at TechCrunch are building a new electronic tablet called the Crunchpad, slated to be released by this November. Apparently Best Buy Chief Marketing Officer Barry Judge got a chance to play around with the prototype.
Judge tweeted “Just met chief blogger at Tech Crunch. Talked about the Crunchpad and saw a prototype. Great looking device, think it will be a real hit.” This just tells me a couple of things. The Crunchpad may actually have a chance against a rumored upcoming Apple tablet computer. And this also tells me that Best Buy seems to be a bigger fan of TechCrunch than he is with Gizmodo.
An hour before Judge tweeted meeting Arrington, he tweeted that he met YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley to discuss ways to better leverage the video website. He also asked his followers for ideas on what other retailers do to use YouTube well. Here’s my two word answer for Judge: viral videos. The Improv Everywhere group hit over one million views in their viral video of sending a bunch of blue shirt, khaki wearing agents into a Best Buy store.
Earlier today, everyone was talking about about a possible Pre price drop. A picture surfaced of a $99 Palm Pre at Best Buy. It looked like an out the door price and did not involve any kind of rebate.
Best Buy had not releases a statement about the price drop so it was unknown whether the drop is simply a promotion or if it permanent.
John Bernier, Best Buy’s Marketing Manager cleared up the issue via Twitter. He said it was a human error and that the price is still $199.
If the price drop were real, this would be bad news for Palm. The Pre launched less than two months ago. A price drop this fast would mean that Palm sales are not strong at its current price point.
A few days ago, Gizmodo blogger Adam Frucci wrote a post called the Seven Types of Employees You Meet at Best Buy. The seven types of employees include car audio thug, marginally cute customer service girl, grizzled old home theater/computer sales lifer, pervy Geek Squad guy, sad department manager, slick careerist manager, and terrifying loss-prevention guy. This blog post got the attention of some of Best Buy’s top brass because the Best Buy CMO Barry Judge retaliated to the blog post.
Below is an excerpt from Judge’s blog:
“We couldn’t resist taking a stab at classifying the seven types of Gizmodo bloggers, but then we realized there’s really only one type of Gizmodo blogger. Here’s that description:
You’ll find this guy on his couch, sporting an ironic t-shirt with a delivery-food stain of some kind. He ‘commuted’ minutes earlier by rolling out of bed and over to his laptop in his shoebox-sized Brooklyn (Williamsburg) apartment littered with empty Redbull cans. He came to Gizmodo 9 months ago after deciding that “traditional media” wasn’t edgy enough (read: required pants and didn’t like it when he powered down walls of TVs). He only puts on pants in order to put electronics down them, and he gets very upset if you mess with his Star Wars legos. He genuinely believes that the hot PR girl is into him and not just trying to get a post. He overuses the word ‘fail.’”
Bad news for GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME) because Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) will be installing game kiosks for used and new video games. The pilot kiosks will be opening up in Dallas and Austin, Texas. GameStop is based in Grapevine, Texas.
Machines at the kiosks will take your used video games and make sure that they are functional. After that it will give you a Best Buy gift card so you can go and spend more money at the retail stores. The pilot is being tested because most used game returns usually go back into buying new games.
Good news for those of you that want the Palm Pre but don’t want to get locked into a 2 year Sprint contract. The phone without a contract costs about $549. The phone will be arriving on June 6 for $199 with a two year contract with a $100 mail-in rebate if you buy it from a Sprint store.
However representatives at Best Buy and Radio Shack have confirmed that buying the phone from their stores will allow you to avoid mailing in that pesky $100 rebate yourself. At those stores the rebates will be instant.
In conclusion, I recommend that if you are going to buy a Pre, get it from Best Buy or Radio Shack. But if you return it to Radio Shack later on, make sure not to get punched.
Its been a good year for Best Buy Co., Inc (NYSE:BBY). The biggest win for the company was that their top competitor Circuit City went out of business and liquidated all of their stores. On top of that, Best Buy reported a 10% sales increase in the fourth quarter with a profit that was higher than expected. This happened in an economic environment that doesn’t favor retail companies.
“We prepared for reduced consumer spending, and we were pleased when the quarter finished stronger than it began,” stated Best Buy CEO Bradbury Anderson.
Best Buy had plans to expand upon their European business, but they will postpone this until later. The company’s home-office division had an 8.1% gain. Their mobile phone business had triple-digit store sales gains too.
What makes Best Buy an attractive place to work for at the corporate headquarters is their results-only work environment (ROWE). This philosophy still seems to be working well for them.
Yeah, that’s right. Best Buy will start selling a $12,000 electric motorcycle. Brammo HQ, the manufacturing company of the Enertia motorcycle received an investment from Best Buy last year. The $11,995 bike will be available at 5 Best Buy stores on the west coast in May.
Brian Dunn, the current President and COO of Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) will be promoted to CEO this summer. This is because the current CEO, Brad Anderson will be set to retire this summer. Anderson has been CEO of Best Buy for about seven years. Even though Anderson will be retiring from the CEO position, he will be retaining his position as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors in order to help with the transition.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) will be selling the T-Mobile G1 powered by Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android phones on the cheap. Starting tomorrow, 550 Wal-Mart stores will be offering the phone at $148.88 with a 2 year agreement.
This move is a blow to Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), who is selling the iPhone for $199-$299. T-Mobile stores sell the phone for $31 more. What will this do for Wal-Mart? This will help them improve get a more tech-savvy demographic.
This sucks for T-Mobile stores because they’ll lose customers as the deal news begins to spread.
Amit Chowdhry | September 15, 2008 | 501 views | Comments Categorized under Best Buy, Napster
The proxy battle for control of Napster (NASDAQ:NAPS) has been ended through the form of an acquisition. Richfield, Minnesota based retailer Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) has bought the digital music download company for $121 million. The agreement is that Best Buy would buy out all of Napster’s stock at a price of $2.65 per share in cash. The transaction will close in the 4th quarter.
Through the acquisition, Best Buy will gain control of Napster’s 700,000 subscribers, the web platform behind the company, and the mobile platform. Napster CEO Chris Gorog and other senior members of the company will stay on board with Napster for an agreed amount of time.
“This transaction offers Best Buy a recognized platform for enhancing our capabilities in the digital media space and building new, recurring relationships with customers,” stated Brian Dunn, President and COO of Best Buy. “Over time we hope to strengthen our offerings to consumers, who we believe will increasingly seek devices and solutions that enable them to access their content wherever, whenever and however they want.”
Prior to the acquisition, three of Napster’s shareholders were in a proxy battle to have the board ousted. These three individuals were Perry H. Rod, Thomas Sailors, and Kavan P. Singh. But then Napster hired UBS to solicit an acquisition.
Napster generated revenue of about $127.5 million in 2008. This was a 15% increase from 2007. Shawn Fanning should be proud. The company he started in college is still worth something today, even 8 years after the dot com bubble crash.
Amit Chowdhry | October 30, 2007 | 561 views | Comments Categorized under Best Buy, Mydeo
“With the growing popularity of video, fueled in part by social networking sites, we’ve actually seen an increase in customer demand for alternative video sharing solutions. Many customers, particularly families with children, don’t want their personal memories available for anyone to see in the public domain nor do they want to share them in a cluttered environment that includes advertising,”
-Kevin Winneroski, VP of Best Buy
Richfield, Minn.-based specialty retailer company, Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) has made a minor equity investment in Mydeo recently. Mydeo plans on using the funding for its video-sharing services. The Best Buy-Mydeo partnership web site is already online at: mydeo.com. Users are encouraged to upload personal videos for storage and then share them on blogs and web sites.Â
This investment complements Best Buy’s market-share dominance in selling digital camera and video camera within the U.S. The more that customers buy digital cameras from Best Buy, the more likely they are to use Mydeo to share video. Mydeo is based in the U.K.
The base plans for 100 minutes of video hosting with lengths up to 30 minutes each starts at $6.97 per month. Additional storage can also be purchased. A premium user plan includes uploading videos that are 90 minutes in length and can store up to 250 minutes of video for $10.47 per month. Videos can be made private and can be shared with family and friends.
Mydeo was started in 2005 by Cary Marsh and Iain Miller. Mydeo partnered with Microsoft to become the software company’s first European Movie Maker Hosting Partner.
Information Source: [1] Mydeo press release: Best Buy Launches Online Video Sharing Service
Best Buy (Best Buy Co., Inc) has partnered with Real Networks’ Rhapsody and SanDisk to launch a digital music store. It will also start selling the SanDisk Sansa e200R Rhapsody digital music player which will play songs downloaded through its music store. Best Buy plans to compete with Apple’s iTunes and Microsoft’s Zune through this new service. It also plans to make sure its employees promote the service to customers. It looks like Best Buy will charge $14.99 a month for a subscription service and .99 cents for single track downloads. I for one do not think we need another retail digital music store. This has failure written all over it.
Best buy will essentially be competing with itself because it already carries a line of Apple iPods and will carry the Microsoft Zune which comes out this holiday season. I am not sure how Apple or Microsoft, who have their own digital music stores, feel about this move. I think that Best Buy needs to stick to what it does best – sell electronics. Going into the digital music business is bad news for a retailer. This service will most likely fail before it ever gains any traction.
“With the growing popularity of video, fueled in part by social networking sites, we’ve actually seen an increase in customer demand for alternative video sharing solutions. Many customers, particularly families with children, don’t want their personal memories available for anyone to see in the public domain nor do they want to share them in a cluttered environment that includes advertising,”
