Is Carphone Warehouse Still a Thing?

Companies come and go. We all know that. Anyone who grew up heading to Dixons for their electronic needs or stopping by Woolworths for some pick ’n’ mix will remember those places fondly, but accept that they’re not here anymore.

Advancements across the board will see some stores disappear, whilst others will change the way that they operate in order to survive in a competitive market. The latter is where Carphone Warehouse finds itself, no longer having high street stores and operating as its own entity, but still existing as part of Currys.

The question is, what happened?

The History of Carphone Warehouse

Even the name of the company is somewhat anachronistic, given the fact that car phones haven’t really been a thing for about 30 years. Carphone Warehouse was founded by Sir Charles Dunstone and Julian Brownlie in 1989, putting forward £6,000 from their savings to get it off the ground. Soon, Guy Johnson from NEC UK came on board as the second partner, later going on to take on the role of Director of Logistics and Distribution. The following year, Dunstone’s school friend David Ross came on board, with the chartered accountant becoming the Chief Operating Officer.

The company grew steadily over the following decade, buying the operations of Tandy in the United Kingdom for £9 million. An Initial Public Offering was made in the July of 2000, then in the July of the following year Johnson decided to sell the majority of his stake and retire. In the November of 2002, the expansion continued with the purchase of Opal Telecom. Ross stepped down as the COO in 2003, but in 2005 he became the Deputy Chairman. In the October of 2006, the company spent £370 million buying the UK operation of the internet access business AOL.

When Best Buy chose to launch Best Buy Europe in 2008, they agreed to pay £1.1 billion for a 50% share in Carphone Warehouse, also opening joint venture shops in the United States of America. Ross resigned from the board in the December of that year. Two years later and the broadband and home phone business was spun off as TalkTalk, then in 2014 a merger was announced between the Carphone Warehouse Group and Dixons Retail to form Dixons Carphone, completing on the seventh of August 2014. In the May of 2015, iD Mobile was launched, using Three’s network.

What Happened to the Stores

In the March of 2020, the company confirmed that it would be closing all of its 531 standalone stores within a month. The decision was taken after the realisation set in that customers were changing how they bought mobile phones.

It was no longer the case that the majority of people went to physical shops in order to buy their phones, with most instead shopping online. That was especially the case in the wake of the global health crisis at the time, when lockdowns meant that everyone realised that they didn’t need to physically go places in order to buy things.

I mentioned to a younger colleague that I remember my dad having a fixed carphone in the days before mobile phones and he looked confused. Then I said that’s why Carphone Warehouse is called that and I blew his mind

— James Earl Marsters (@earlofbeverley.bsky.social) Apr 10, 2024 at 13:32

There was also the fact that Apple customers were prone to head to Apple Stores, whilst users of the likes of Samsung phones would also go to the Samsung-specific shops in their local area. The proliferation of other, online-only, networks such as 1p Mobile and SMARTY, meant that the need to go to a shop like Carphone Warehouse in order to get a good deal on a mobile phone contract had greatly diminished.

The overheads associated with the company in large physical stores were entirely unnecessary and an expense that could be avoided by closing said stores down.

Partnering with Currys

As part of the reasoning behind closing the physical stores that Carphone Warehouse owned, the company was able to have ‘shops within shops’ at hundreds of Currys stores around the country. A major rebrand was carried out in order to remove the Dixons name altogether, with all of the brands coming under the Currys name as Currys plc.

The physical stores of Carphone Warehouse represented around 8% of the overall selling space boasted by the company in the United Kingdom, but a new strategy was needed in order to rescue the mobile business that had been struggling.

Which is fine. But I bought it from Currys PCWorld Carphone Warehouse pic.twitter.com/GoPDK5QIEO

— Jme (@JmeBBK) December 15, 2015

The long and short of it was that Carphone Warehouse would live on, but only inside Currys stores around the country. Around 3,000 people lost their jobs because of the decision, although as many as possible were moved to new roles within the company.

If you’re the sort of person who likes to head to a store in order to buy a mobile phone or to take out a new mobile phone contract, you will be able to do exactly that by heading along to your nearest big Currys shop. Sadly, though, the days of Carphone Warehouse being a major presence on the British high street are long gone, never to return.