StreakSmart

Best Buy barely promoting Dell Streak in stores

Streak-bb-display Yesterday was supposed to be a pretty big day for the Dell Streak in the US. It was the first day that the device would be in brick-and-mortar stores, giving people who already knew about it a chance to finally see it in person and introducing it to the average consumer who had never heard of it before.

Best Buy, a name synonymous with gadgets in the US, was given the honors of being not only the first store to bring the Streak into the offline retail world, but (at the time of this writing) the only store. A Best Buy exclusive launch? People will come in droves! Streaks will fly off shelves!

Um . . . no.

The Streak was available to purchase at Best Buy locations across the country, as promised, but the promotion was handled so poorly that I think the only people who even knew about it were you guys. The tablet/phone wasn't in Best Buy's weekly ad and the in-store display (for the stores that actually had one up) was sub-par for an "exclusive" new device described as "the next generation of super smart phones."

At my local Best Buy, for example, the endcap display was on the backside of the aisle facing the entrance. It was behind you if you were standing in the check-out line, meaning you'd never see it. All the other phones were displayed in rows at the front of the store's mobile section; the Streak's display was by itself in the back.

To make matters worse, the display wasn't even completed.

Streak-bb-disp

Those are three empty mounts you're looking at. So even if the stars were aligned in such a way that someone actually found the display, it wouldn't do much good.

This isn't an isolated incident either. Based on what I've heard from readers all day yesterday and this morning, what I saw at my local Best Buy mirrored what many others saw at their local stores too. Some displays were finished, with fully functional Streaks mounted where they were supposed to be, but the "launch" as a whole was still very disappointing.

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Jenn K. Lee

Jenn K. Lee is the founder of Pocketables. She loves gadgets the way most women love shoes and purses. The pieces in her tech wardrobe that go with everything are currently the Samsung Galaxy Note II, Sony Tablet P, and Nexus 7, but there are still a couple of vintage UMPCs/MIDs in the back of her closet.

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