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LG Recalls Microwave Ovens LG Electronics is voluntarily recalling microwave ovens manufactured between August 2007 to February 2008 in order to repair a fault which “may pose a risk of electric shock to the user”, according to the company.

Myer Snares 3G iPhone Deal Myer’s retail jingle may well say that ‘Myer is my store’, but as of today, Myer may well be an iPhone store as the retailer launches a loyalty program that will enable Myer One customers to pre-register for the iPhone through Vodafone.

LG Invents Toughest Monitor In The World For those looking for a display that can take a beating- and I mean a real beating, without smashing it into a thousand pieces, LG has just the thing for you.

Two New Multifunctions From Samsung Samsung has released the CLX-6210FX and CLX-6240FX multifunctions that are claimed to assure low cost per print and economical total cost of operation for businesses.

Mobile Printer For Those On The Move Canon’s PIXMA iP100 portable inkjet printer is said to provide professional documents and photos from any location. Canon has designed the printer for mobile businesspeople and busy students looking for a portable printer that will meet their needs in today’s modern environment.

Apple Fans Get Ready For Big Store Opening Apple’s first retail store in Australia will open on George Street in Sydney on Thursday, 19 June at 5:00 p.m., with the company looking to repeat the success of other Apple stores overseas.

Corporate Express Sold New Office Works Competitor An Option Corporate Express one of the biggest buyers of PC and office supply gear in Australia has been sold to U.S. office supplies company Staples with speculation now mounting that the Company is considering the setting up of a retail office supply network in Australia to take on OfficeWorks.

JB Hi Fi On A Roll CEO Speaks Out On The Economy The CEO of leading CE retailer JB Hi-Fi Richard Uechtritz ,has said that rising oil prices is the biggest danger to the Australian economy not interest rates. He claimed this after announcing that his profit for the year ending 30 June 2008 will be around $64 million, a 58% increase on the prior years NPAT of $40.4 million (previous guidance was $57 to $60 million).

Resellers Angry With Apple Over Biggest Ever Store Opening Apple resellers in the Sydney CBD and surrounding suburbs are expecting business to be sucked out of them later this month by the opening of Apple’s biggest ever store in Sydney.

Queensland- Beautiful One Day, Fraudulent The Next Things are always bigger in Queensland- houses, bananas and footy teams in particular, and so it seems is the size of eBay fraud as Queensland police say they have tracked down 23 repeat offenders responsible for about half that state's reported eBay fraud.

Pioneer Electronics To Open Three New Stores Pioneer Electronics Australia has not denied that it will open their own retail store in Australia. This week in the USA the Company announced that it plans to open three additional locations this year. The stores, like previous Pioneer stores will showcase and sell the company’s full home entertainment line, as well as several products exclusive to Pioneer’s direct sale program.

Telstra Takes On EBay Telstra subsidiary Sensis has launched a new Australian online auction site aimed squarely at eBay, amid the furore over eBay Australia's controversial new insistence that most future payments can be made only by eBay's PayPal system.

Thieves Swoop On Dockets At Aldi Store Claims Manager Aldi the supermarket chain has a security issue claims a store manager at their North Sydney store. She claims that consumers are picking up discarded checkout dockets from the floor and then entering the main area of the supermarket to steal items among their electrical goods.

Pioneer Offers Huge Price Drops To Increase Sales According to a statement from Pioneer, following strong unit sales of the HD KURO plasma screens over the past few months, Pioneer Electronics says it has completely sold out of its PDP-508XDA 50 inch HD plasma screens in Australia, with only limited unit stock of the 42 inch HD model available.

Vignette Launches Automated Transaction Tracker Vignette has launched its Case Manager, which allows organisations to automate and track important customer transactions, such as credit and mortgage applications and income tax forms, across multiple communications channels including the web, email, phone and paper.

Betta Sales Solid In Softening Market National franchisor BSR, the owner of the Betta Electrical brand, has reported that trading across the company’s network in 2008 has been solid, despite a general softening of retail conditions.

Harvey Norman Sales Wobbly Say Competitors Consumer electronics retailer Harvey Norman has seen same store sales rise only 2.4 per cent for the first four months of 2008. In the same period last year they sales had risen 7.9 per cent according to their latest financial results.

Harvey Norman Starts To Tank The results are in and electrical goods and furniture retailer Harvey Norman total sales for the four months to April 30 rose 6.4 per cent, as consumers eased back on big-ticket purchases.

Blockbuster To Get Sneek Peek At Circuit City According to the Washingtonn Post US consumer electronic retailer Circuit City will open its books to Video Ezy partner Blockbuster and billionaire Carl Icahn in a step toward a possible sale of the company.

Will Japan Put Copyright Levy On iPod Users? According to AFP, Japan is considering a copyright fee for buyers of iPods and similar portable audio players, as well as hard disc video recorders.

JB Hi Fi Up 9.2% As New Store Program Revealed CE retailer JB Hi Fi who recently re branded their Digital Home online aquisition as JB Hi Fi Digital Home has seen their shares jump as much as 9.2 percent after it said that trading in February, March and April had been solid, and that it anticipated earnings being towards the top end of its guidance.

iPod AM/FM Table Radio From Conexus The iHome iH10 iPod FM Table Radio features classic rotary knobs for precise, intuitive control; a wood speaker cabinet with tuned speaker chamber technology for richer sound; plays and charges your docked iPod when connected to an AC adaptor.

City Software Goes From Bricks To Clicks IT Retailer, City Software, will close its two stores by June 30 and reinvent itself as an online and call centre business.

Appliance Retailing Sales Start To Wobble The recently released Citi's Retail Sales Indicator showed a retail spending slowdown with 6.8 per cent growth in March, compared with the 11.1 per cent growth in February 2008.

Churn And Burn Retailers Leave Customers Fuming According to a new online satisfaction report released yesterday, more than half of the consumers surveyed have ceased buying products and services from a company due to poor customer service and a high number felt that the supplier didn’t know it had lost their business.

Now Kenwood Goes After Boston Marantz And Denon D&M Holdings the owners of the Marantz, Denon and Boston brands is up for sale and during the past few weeks their shares have rocketed by over 40% as big name Companies bid for the Japanese operation. In the latest twist Kenwood who last year cut a deal with JVC has entered the auction frenzy.

Which Is The Most Important Brand In Your Life? In a recent poll by online magazine brandchannel.com, readers were asked to identify which brands had the greatest impact on their lives, and how these brands affected their behaviour and overall view of the world.

Online Retailing Stuck In Dark Ages Says Report According to a report by consultancy, The Leading Edge, Australia is seriously lagging behind the rest of the world in the uptake of online retailing.

Good Guys & Harvey Norman Top ERA The Good Guys along with Harvey Norman have been nominated as some of the five finalists of the Best Retail Store at the Electrical Retailing Awards (ERAs), with and Radio Rentals also making the cut.

3 Rolls Out More Affordable Broadband Plans 3 has launched three new broadband plans in an effort to make mobile broadband even more appealing to more consumers than ever before, the company said.

Radio Rentals To Quit High Street For Online EXCLUSIVE: Radio Rentals is set to take a massive gamble late this year when they quite retail stores for a 100% online sales operation. The move which mirrors the move made by UK retailer Dixons 18 months ago is set to be a bold experiment in the power of the web over traditional bicks and mortar retail.

JB Hi Fi In Restrictive Practises Strife With ACCC Leading consumer electronic retailer JB Hi Fi is in strife with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission after allegations of restrictive practises trade practices in Victoria.

More Shoppers Purchasing Online Consumers are getting more comfortable with the idea of online shopping, as more than 86 percent of the world’s online population have used the Internet to make a purchase, according to a Nielsen Online Survey.

Why Gerry Harvey Is Wrong & JB Hi Fi Right Consumers around the world are moving to online retailing to buy consumer technology products and the move by JB Hi Fi to roll out a national online buying network will hurt arch competitor Harvey Norman whose Chairman came out swinging against the Internet this week.

Harvey Norman OFIS Prefers Manaccom Harvey Norman’s new OFIS chain of office goods stores, which will eventually go up against Woolworths’ OfficeWorks, has appointed Trend Micro Internet Security manufacturer, Manaccom, as its preferred software supplier when the first of the OFIS stores open in March.

JB Hi-Fi Expects $1.8 Billion This Year Winning electronics retailer, JB Hi-Fi, says it expects to better its sales result for the 2007 financial year, which reached an incredible $1.7 billion, with the company forecasting $1.8 billion and net profit after tax of up to $60 million.

JB Hi-Fi Adds Five And Stays Alive Australia’s third-largest retailer, JB Hi-Fi, says it will open five new stores in Australia and New Zealand this year, after announcing a jump in net profit after tax for the half-year ending 31 December of 60 per cent – the company’s highest-ever sales growth.

IT Plan Rakes In Cash For JB Hi-Fi JB Hi-Fi has recorded a massive 50 per cent increase in sales in the six months leading up to Christmas 2007 from the same period the year before, with CEO Richard Uechtritz attributing the success to strong buying power and a unique store model that includes a new roll-out of IT and computer products across Australia.

JB Hi-Fi Strengthens IT Offering In New Stores JB Hi-Fi will open a store in the basement of the famous Strand Arcade in Sydney at the end of the month, signposting the technology retailer’s second store opening in the Sydney CBD and strengthening the company’s presence in the business district.

Ken Lee Public Memorial Service Tomorrow Customers, friends and the public will have the chance to pay their respects tomorrow to consumer electronics giant, Bing Lee, co-founder and former chairman Ken Lee, who sadly passed away shortly before Christmas last year.

Betta Electrical Takes Punt With GoTalk VoIP Fledgling telecommunications company, GoTalk, which specialises in VoIP solutions, has gained distribution in one of the country’s largest electrical retail chains, Betta Electrical.

Woolies Reaches Top-25 Retailers Globally Australian supermarket chain, Woolworths, has hit a milestone by becoming the first Australian retailer to enter the top-25 worldwide retailers according to a poll.

Online Xmas Pressie Research Highest Ever Consumer electronics and appliances grew substantially in terms of website traffic over the Christmas period, boasting a 30 per cent rise in consumers searching for the categories online than the same period in 2006.

See Eee In Major REeetailers The tiny Asus Eee PC is now selling in major retail outlets including Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi and Retravision, following high public demand for the device, says its maker.

Quickflix Fall Stumps Directors The board of online DVD rental company, Quickflix, has not been able to explain the company’s recent share price loss of 34 per cent, instead announcing that the company is performing well.

ARA Gags Garrett Bag Ban The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) has called the Federal Government’s push to ban plastic bags, lead by Environmentalist Minister, Peter Garrett, an example of “populist politics” that won’t help to save the planet anyway.

Quickflix Out Of The Rough Local online DVD rental company, Quickflix, has recorded a boost in subscriber numbers despite tough competition in the market against bargain-priced sale DVDs and rising movie download numbers.

Wow Director Flags TVs, Laptops & Nav For Xmas Wow Sight & Sound director Con Nicolas says if the highest-selling products of 2007 are anything to go by, flat-screen TVs, laptops and handheld navigation will be the hot gift items for Christmas and into the 2008 sales season.

Almost 10% Web Traffic From Online Stores Web-based retailers should have already begun to experience a boom in business with consumers choosing to avoid crowded shopping centres, instead comparing products and prices online at sites including Amazon, eBay and Trading Post.

Harvey's OFIS To Use Pronto Sales System Ten new Harvey Norman OFIS-branded office supply stores will use Pronto’s Pronto-Xi enterprise resource planning (ERP) software package for all their front and back office requirements, online sales, purchase orders, distribution and financial management in a seamless system.