Best Buy and Carphone Warehouse have already gotten cozy west of the Atlantic to collaborate on Best Buy's Mobile locations, so what's the next logical move? Collaborating on the east side, that's what, to the tune of $2.1 billion. The money will buy Best Buy a solid half of Carphone's retail business, giving the combined company enough horsepower (theoretically, anyway) to take on other retailers across Europe; existing stores will retain the Carphone Warehouse name, but new, larger stores to be opened in 2009 and beyond will be branded Best Buy. Carphone looks to use that nice little cash infusion to make fresh investments in landline and broadband operations -- but with both landline and wireless business struggling from market saturation and a downtick in the economy, how long is this all going to take to turn into black ink?

[Via mocoNews]