HMV CEO Quits After Poor Sales Due To Increased Online Competition From Amazon and iTunes


The CEO of high street music retailer HMV and Waterstones bookstores has resigned after poor sales over Christmas period, citing increased online competition from Amazon and iTunes. Once sales from new stores are stripped out of HMV’s numbers, sales fell 2.4% compared to the same period in 2004. In an interview Giles said that ‘one of the winners in 2005 was the
Internet’.

It’s good to see that the internet is finally having a real impact on the fortunes of high street stores. For too long they have been able to artificially inflate prices, even sometimes colluding with ‘rivals’ to maintain margins.

It’ll be interesting to see some studies in 2006 on what proportion of household income is spent online. I do almost all of my shopping online and I think about 60% of my expenditure is done online. All of my big ticket items - mortgage, car, loans, credit cards, insurance etc were arranged online. The only things that I buy offline are clothes and food, although I do use Tesco home shopping occasionally. I know I’m a bit of an internet fanatic, but I’m sure that there are a lot of people in the same boat as me.

Bookmark & Share

Related Posts

About the Author

author photo

Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and currently runs the Portal and online operations for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. He also writes for Windows 7 News.

See All Posts by This Author

Subscribe without commenting

Post a Response


Comment Policy: Any comments are permitted only because the site owner is letting you post, and any comments could be removed for any reason at the absolute discretion of the site owner.
  • Subscribe Now!

    subscribe to my feed subscribe to my feed
    1 - What is RSS?
    2 - Or, signup & receive updates by email!
  • www.checkcost.co.uk

    Read Reviews & Compare

    Computer

    Laptops

    Printer

    MP3 Players

    Compare Prices

  • Polls

    Which Mobile OS Will Be The Winner in 2009?






    View Results

    Loading ... Loading ...
  • RSS Windows 7 News

    • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
  • Meta