Electronics, Retail | featured news

Best Buy's profit fell 30% as same-store sales continued to slide. The electronics retailer also revised its full-year earnings view.

In a pair of moves that suggest Apple is enforcing rules for selling content on its devices, Kobo, the Canadian e-book retailer, and The Wall Street Journal said they will no longer sell content directly to customers.

A online Sears ad that mistakenly advertised the 16-gigabyte, Wi-Fi-only iPad 2 for $69 — and got shoppers' hopes up and orders placed — was retracted by the retail giant, which blamed a third-party seller of Apple's popular tablet for an advertising typo. That model iPad 2 is normally sold for $744.99 by the third-party seller, GSM On Sale.

It started with one store at Tysons Corner Center in Virginia, just outside of Washington. Ten years and more than 300 stores later, it's become a retailing venture unique in the world of consumer electronics.

Shoppers ignored Best Buy Co Inc's promotion of pricey 3D televisions and other high-end gadgets this holiday season as they chased bargains elsewhere, hammering the company's profits.

Verizon Wireless will begin selling Apple's iPad at its 2,000 retail stores nationwide on Oct. 28, the companies announced Thursday.

The retail giant will offer all six models of the iPad and will roll out the tablet devices to over 2,300 stores by mid-November.

“For the holidays, the tablets will be mostly Android-based, plus the iPad,” said Mike Vitelli, Best Buy’s President of North and South American business, in an interview.

Buried in a story on Best Buy's retail strategy, CEO Brian Dunn mentioned a startling fact: Internal estimates showed that the iPad had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs by as much as 50%.

Best Buy's earnings jumped 61% as the retailer rebounded from a weakened year-earlier quarter on higher revenue and margins.