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Amazon, Sprint reportedly looking to buy RadioShack stores
RadioShack has been struggling as of late, with the company’s stocks recently dropping by 13% down to only $.24. After being suspended from the New York Stock Exchange today, the company faces inevitable bankruptcy, according to reports. In a new Bloomberg report from earlier today, mobile carrier Sprint is possibly looking to buy RadioShack stores around the US in hopes to expand the company’s retail presence. RadioShack has over 4,000 brick-and-mortar stores around the US, and is moving toward a deal to sell half of them to Sprint and closing the other half. Sprint has been in talks to buy anywhere from 1,300 to 2,000 of these stores. In their negotiations, both companies have discussed co-branding the stores, keeping both the Sprint and RadioShack names.
Marcelo Claure, Sprint CEO, explained to investors about the company’s future plans:
This is a year in which we intend to grow our distribution dramatically. You are going to see the opening of more and more Sprint stores as this is one area that we work on.
Sprint isn’t the only company looking at RadioShack locations, though. According to ‘two people with knowledge of the matter’, Amazon is looking into buying some RadioShack locations as well. Amazon could use these stores as a showcase for their hardware (Fire Phone, Kindle, Echo Speaker), as well as pick-up and drop-off locations for items purchased and sold online.
If Amazon were to succeed in purchasing a few thousand RadioShack stores, this would be the company’s biggest push into the retail space. Amazon, being mostly online-based, has a great reason to open up retail locations. The majority of Amazon’s hardware is scattered about retail locations around the US, though most Amazon products aren’t displayed in a way for consumers to interact with the products, especially all in one place. With companies like Apple and Microsoft that have thousands of brick-and-mortar locations around the world, this is a great way for Amazon to showcase what they have to offer.