Carphone Warehouse has confirmed it is closing over 80 stores in Ireland with immediate effect. This follows the recent withdrawal from Carphone Warehouse by Vodafone and similar rumours that Eir would withdraw.
Despite confirmation from Three, which has over 2.6 million customers in Ireland, confirming they remained “committed to continuing to work with Carphone Warehouse here in Ireland”, the company has had to close its doors in Ireland. Prior to the pandemic, the company employed over 580 staff here in Ireland. Today’s news sees 486 people lose their job across retail and head office positions.
Why Is Carphone Warehouse Closing?
Carphone Warehouse has had spluttering performance over the past few years. In the UK, parent company, Dixons Carphone, closed more than 530 stores last year with nearly 3,000 job losses. Here in Ireland, the launch of ID Mobile should have been a winning formula but it failed to land with the buying public. Ireland’s “one stop shop” for all mobile networks, on paper, should have been a success but Vodafone’s recent withdrawal from Carphone shelves proved to be a death nail for the company.
Like many stores over the past 12-months, Carphone Warehouse has had to close or work on the basis of restricted footfall. The company’s online presence was largely based on driving customers to store instead of being able to purchase directly online. Naturally, this meant the past 12-months were incredible difficult for the UK-owned company here in Ireland.
The company website has closed and now says “As part of Dixons Carphone’s broader transformation, of one joined up and profitable business, it has made the difficult but necessary decision to close Carphone Warehouse in Ireland, in line with its decision to close all standalone Carphone Warehouse stores in the UK in 2020”.
The Changing Mobile Landscape
In closing, Carphone Warehouse highlighted that “customers are changing the way they buy mobile devices and connectivity, replacing their handsets less often and buying them separately or as part of more flexible bundles”. This comes as the ability to buy phones in many new ways does indeed change how customers buy their phones. Right now, I’m testing an iPhone 12 from Refurbed.ie and it’s perfect. That’s just one sustainable way of reducing the number of phones in the market while others continue to buy new but spread costs across credit cards or payments plans, saving money versus long term contracts.
More on this breaking story as we learn it. Hit the bell in the bottom left corner for updates.
