60 Carphone Warehouse Stores are Now Samsung Only Stores

Carphone Warehouse Group PLC, known as Carphone Warehouse, is an independent mobile phone retailer. It has close to 2,000 stores across Europe. It is based in the United Kingdom which includes all Carphone Warehouse stores. Outside Ireland and the United Kingdom, the company trades as Phone House.

As you can see, Carphone Warehouse has quite the presence all across Europe. Today, Samsung announced that it has signed a 'preferred partner' agreement with Carphone Warehouse. The result of this agreement is to operate over 60 Samsung stand-alone stores across Europe.

We are not looking at long term plans. The goal is to have all the stores up and running in three months. This marks Samsung’s first foray on a large-scale basis into standalone shops around Europe. This is seen to be a direct challenge to Apple.

Currently Spain has three pilot Samsung stores, also operated by Carphone Warehouse. The breakdown is that there will be between 10 and 15 stores in the U.K., the remaining stores will open in Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands and additional stores in Spain.

Andrew Harrison, chief executive of Carphone, said, "This is an important alliance playing to both companies' strengths. Together we will create a powerful new retail concept to showcase, for our customers, a wide range of products, content and services as well as injecting both investment and new jobs into the retail sector."

According to Samsung, the stores will have a premium look and feel. They will sell Samsung mobile communications products across Samsung's full range of mobiles, tablets, laptops and wearables. Carphone Warehouse will continue to operate the stores, but they will only sell Samsung products.

Samsung is trying to achieve in three months what has taken Apple about 10 years to accomplish. It is looking to establish a very strong and visible presence in Europe. Apple currently has 98 wholly owned outlets in eight European countries, 37 of which are in the U.K.

Carphone will retain the retail profits generated while Samsung will benefit from the sale of its products. They will be staffed by Carphone employees, although Samsung may pay a portion of the salaries. In addition, it will reduce the shelf space for competitors and provide Samsung with dedicated venues to promote its products.

Samsung has promised Carphone Warehouse a 60 percent share of its shops across Europe. This would suggest that Samsung is only getting started and more outlets could be on their way. The deal, which names Carphone as Samsung’s “preferred partner,” sent the U.K.-listed mobile retailer’s shares up more than 6 percent in midday trading.

Carphone has been looking for the next big thing since it ended its partnership with Best Buy. The U.K. firm's chairman, Sir Charles Dunstone, is hoping the Samsung-Carphone model will be adopted by other brands such as Microsoft and Blackberry, or by general stores looking to specialize in electronics.

Harrison said, "We are delighted to have been chosen as Samsung's preferred European partner for their store roll-out.  Our Connected World Services business will combine Carphone Warehouse's retailing expertise and systems with one of the world's biggest brands and will help us make even more lives better through connected technology."