ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

Best Buy announces its latest strategic priorities at its 2011 Investor and Analyst day-- planning to reach customers in any means, through online, its stores, over the phone or in their homes.

The retailer will be expanding its multi-channel, multi-category business, diversifying its retail outlets-- ranging from small Best Buy Express kiosks and Best Buy Mobile standalone locations to the typical "big box" stores. It also plans to expand its online presence, mentioning its goal of doubling its current online business in the US within the next 3 - 5 years.

Best Buy's Chinese Five Star brand intends to open 400 - 500 stores in the next 5 years, with plans to growing to up to 1000 stores.

The retailer's unaudited revenue for Q1 2011 totals $5511m in Europe-- with WW results reaching $50272m.

Go Best Buy Outlines its Strategy and Actions

Go Online Boosts Best Buy's 2010

Samsung signs off its HDD business to Seagate for the price of $1.375BN-- a move reducing the HDD market to just 3 players (Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba).

Through the sale, Samsung will provide Seagate with its semiconductor products for use in its enterprise-class SSD and solid state hybrid products, while Samsung PCs will carry Seagate drives.

The move will also expand Seagate's consumer access to China and Southeast Asia, via Samsung's channels.

Samsung is one of the world's biggest flash memory manufacturers, while Seagate is expanding its business in SSDs, particularly for enterprise environments.

Go Seagate and Samsung Announce Strategic Alignment

The 80's are making a comeback-- Commodore USA launches a new version of the classic C64, looking just like one remembers, complete with beige-gray body and chunky keyboard.

Of course the innards are new, as it carries a 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor, NVidia Ion 2 graphics card and 2/4Gb of DDR2 memory (as opposed to the original's 64k).

Instead of cartridge and joystick ports customers will find HDMI and USB ports, with DVD/blu-ray drives as an additional option.

The machine ships with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS as OS, although nostalgic users will be happy to know it also contains a C64 emulator and classic game package. Meanwhile Commodore USA plans to update other classic Commodore machines, including the VIC-20 and the now-legendary Amiga.

Go Commodore 64

In a bid to "restructure" its consumer business Cisco starts making cuts-- first of which involves the closing down of its Flip business, without even considering putting the division on sale.

Some will recall Cisco's buying of the low-cost camera business back in 2009 for $590m, a period where the company was trying to build up its consumer business. No Cisco will be cleaning out its Flip inventory before killing the line entirely.

Analysts blame smartphones for Cisco's Flip-killing decision-- since all phones carry not only cameras (most even in HD), but also internet connections-- and all the social networking possibilities that combination entails.

The company's Linksys line-- another part of its consumer business-- will also see manufacturing changes, as Cisco says it will put its focus on "greater profitability".

A final big change will involve the heavily hyped (and still oddly named) umi consumer telepresence system, which will get integrated within Cisco's business telepresence sector.

Go Cisco Kills Flip Camera

Go Flip