Best Buy Closing 250 Small-Footprint Stores Dedicated to Mobile

Best Buy is closing 250 of its small-footprint stores across the United States dedicated to mobile devices by May 31, the company’s CEO announced.

The stores, which averaged 1,400 square feet compared to the company's big box 40,000-square-foot outlets, were opened more than a decade ago and were meant to compete against wireless carriers, Apple and online giants like Amazon, The Verge reported.

"We had opened them about 12 years ago, at a time when the penetration of smartphones was very low, so this was a great growth opportunity," Best Buy chief executive officer Hubert Joly told the Business Insider. "The margins in smartphones were very good. Fast forward to 2018, smartphone penetration is a very mature industry."

Now, Best Buy has decided to invest in its big box stores for that service. Joly said the company can provide "a better experience because there's more space."

Joly told the website that small mobile stories comprised one percent of Best Buy's total square footage and one percent of the company's revenue.

"In business, you have to constantly optimize what you do," Joly told the Business Insider. "If you don't optimize, you're stuck. Our VCR department, for example, is not doing so well anymore."

While the VCR comment was made in jest, Best Buy announced in February that its stores would stop selling compact discs as that market gives way to digital streaming, Billboard magazine reported. Best Buy did say that it would continue to carry vinyl for the next two years, since it has been resurging.

The Business Insider said Best Buy had not opened a new big box store since 2011, but recently announced that it was opening a 36,000-square-foot store in suburban Salt Lake City soon.

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