Amazon is reportedly in discussions to buy hundreds of retail stores across the US to showcase its products, such as the Kindle tablet and Fire smartphone, and act as delivery points for online orders.
The Seattle-based company, which last week reported annual sales of $89bn (£59bn), is in talks about acquiring some of collapsed electronics chain RadioShack’s 4,000 stores, Bloomberg reported. Amazon did not respond to requests for comment. RadioShack declined to comment.
The proposed deal would be Amazon’s biggest push into traditional retailing and present a challenge to Apple, which has stores in cities across America and the rest of the world.
While the Kindle has been a sales success, the Fire – which was billed as a rival to the iPhone – has flopped. Third-party sales figures published in 2014 suggested that Amazon had only sold 35,000 Fire phones. Amazon has repeatedly dropped the price of the phone, eventually bringing it to just 99 cents (on a two-year contract) down from $199. The failure to shift enough Fire smartphones contributed to a $170m writedown in the third quarter of last year.
