Post(s) tagged with "best buy"

Best Buy Stole Trade Secrets, And Is Fined $27M

First Round Capital and NEA decided to proceed with a lawsuit against Best Buy, after that retail chain apparently stole the analytics and business plan of Techforward, a startup funded by the two venture firms. The evidence is amazingly blatant, especially emails leading up to Best Buy launching its own nationwide buy-back program, and pulls in $140M.

Josh Koppelman, Why First Round Capital funded a lawsuit

[…] after 18 months in court, a nine-person jury found Best Buy liable for misappropriation of TechForward’s trade secrets and breach of contract, and returned a verdict of $22 million in favor of TechForward.  And the jury also found by clear and convincing evidence that Best Buy did so willfully and maliciously, so the judge awarded an additional $5 million in punitive damages.

Best Buy deserves to go out of business. And anyone considering participation in the College Innovators Fund — innovative ideas from college students — should walk away from these crooks.

Source: redeye.firstround.com

6 December 2012 13 Permalink
techforwardbest buytrade secretsjosh koppelmannewfirst round capital
Watch Out, Best Buy, Ikea Will Soon Sell Their Own HDTV System And It’s Awesome - Matt Burns via TechCrunch ⇢

IKEA has announced launching the Uppleva line of integrated HDTV and furniture: it’s genius, and completely supports my contention from yesterday that only two kinds of retailers are growing. One, like IKEA and Apple, are selling their own designs, more or less exclusively. The second are specialty purveyors of carefully curated goods, like Trader Joe’s.

The Uppleva line is going to be very successful, I predict, and opens the TV market to IKEA, and will hasten the demise of chains like Best Buy:

Matt Burns via TechCrunch

The new UPPLEVA line completely disrupts the big box store’s HDTV buying process with a high-dose injection of Ikea genius.

Ikea has yet to announce the nitty-gritty details around the UPPLEVA line including the price. The line will apparently hit key stores in Stockholm, Milan, Paris, Gdansk, and Berlin in June 2012. Come autumn it will arrive at additional stores in Sweden, Italy, France, Poland, Denmark, Spain, Norway, and Portugal with a more broad launch following in 2013.

The YouTube teaser lays out some basic spec concerning the HDTV. It seems up to the task with a 1080p LED LCD screen, 400Hz response time, and some sort of smart TV functionality — all good stuff. But the HDTV really doesn’t matter. Even though it has the specs of a high-end screen, Ikea could have employed a mid-range model and still made the same magic.

Ikea understands that everything needs to work together. This new product line from the Swedish retailer exemplifies the notion of an all-in-one system. Sure, this probably doesn’t appeal to audio heads or A/V geeks, but it brings a beautiful system that works to the masses. Like with everything else Ikea sells, the UPPLEVA system is completely customizable with a range of TV sizes and cabinet designs. Buyers probably still have to piece them together using those dumb keys, though.

IKEA is one of the few companies that can really battle Apple for the living room.

18 April 2012 25 Permalink
best buyfuture of retailhdtvikeaupplevaapple
Best Buy boss says iPad ‘cannibalizing’ PC laptop sales by 50 percent | 9 to 5 Mac Best Buy boss says iPad ‘cannibalizing’ PC laptop sales by 50 percent | Apple Intelligence ⇢

“People are willing to disproportionately spend for these devices because they are becoming so important to their lives,” Best Buy Chief Executive Brian Dunn said in an interview. “We are really positioning the company to be the place where people can come and see the best of the connected world.”

11 October 2010 Permalink
ipadlaptopbest buy

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Web anthropologist, futurist, author. My focus is the future, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating future. (More.)

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