Carphone Warehouse closed all 531 UK stores — the mobile phone market had passed it by

Carphone Warehouse was founded in 1989 by Sir Charles Dunstone with £6,000 in savings. It grew into the UK's largest independent mobile phone retailer, with 531 standalone stores at its peak. The company floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000, acquired AOL's UK internet business for £370M in 2006, and merged with Dixons Retail in 2014 to form Dixons Carphone.

By the late 2010s, the mobile phone retail market had fundamentally changed. Customers were replacing phones less frequently, and the share of phone purchases made online was rising. The standalone Carphone Warehouse stores — which sold only mobile phones and accessories — were losing relevance against larger electronics retailers like Currys PC World that sold phones alongside computers, TVs and appliances. The mobile business was losing £90M a year.

On March 17, 2020, Dixons Carphone announced it would close all 531 standalone Carphone Warehouse stores in the UK, cutting 2,900 jobs. The company said the decision was part of a turnaround strategy that had been outlined in December 2018, and was not directly caused by the coronavirus pandemic, though the uncertain outlook underlined the need for decisive action. The 305 Carphone Warehouse shops inside Currys PC World stores were unaffected, and about 1,800 of the affected staff were offered roles elsewhere in the business.

The closure marked the end of an era for a brand that had been a fixture of British high streets for three decades. The company continued as an online-only mobile retailer under the Currys umbrella.