When Circuit City filed for bankruptcy, it was easy to see who the obvious winners are: Best Buy (NASDAQ: BBY) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) stood to split the market share previously occupied by the second largest electronics retailer in the country.

But then a funny thing happened: Much of the sales volume that Circuit City was doing simply vanished. The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that The Census Bureau's estimate of electronics and appliance store sales -- which include Best Buy -- fell just 0.9% in February. But they dropped an average of 11.2% over the next three months. Overall retail sales declines actually narrowed slightly over that time. . . Best Buy has increased revenue through store expansion, but traffic has declined even after Circuit City's liquidation."

Best Buy Co. (NYSE: BBY) has seen some success in its Canadian stores in selling used video games. Due to that, used video games may come to U.S. stores this year, opening up a new avenue for foot traffic into the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. Why rent video games when you can purchase them at heavy discounts?

Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), the electronics mecca that competes with retailers such as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Target (NYSE: TGT), Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD), and GameStop (NYSE: GME), will be issuing earnings for the first fiscal quarter on Tuesday, June 16. According to this source, Best Buy will see a decline in net income. Analysts believe that the retailer will do $0.34 per share, which represents a drop of about 20%.

But, according to that same source, Best Buy has beaten the analysts at their game in the last two quarters. If you ask me, I think the company has a good chance of beating the forecast yet again. With all the euphoria in the equities market as of late, and with all the talk about the recession possibly coming to an end late this year, I feel that consumers must have been in a better mood in the most recent quarter. And one would assume a big name like Best Buy would get its share of the traffic.

Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) has less competition now that former rival Circuit City is now out of business, but that doesn't mean it has had a stellar year so far. Best Buy has been hit hard by the recession just like all other retailers, but it's also planning for the future despite sagging sales and the like in its last three fiscal quarters.

With the recession still in full swing these days, retailers continue to try and entice consumers into stores with discounts, special programs and new and improved gimmicks to ensure sales don't decline to drastically. So, in that sense, does it sound logical that some retailers are actually opening new stores? In some ways this may actually make sense, as long as you still to small, efficient and highly profitable.

OfficeMax, Inc. (NYSE: OMX), Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) and others are opening concept stores with a very limited selection of items in some markets and areas where full-size stores would be a huge risk. Best Buy has it Best Buy Mobile concept stores filled with high-margin wireless accessories and commissioned wireless handset and contract sales, and OfficeMax is launching stores with a selection of extremely popular items in stores as small as 2,000 square feet.

When the Napster brand woke up the music industry using illegal downloading almost a decade ago by allowing digital music swapping across the internet, a completely new cottage industry was born. Pretty shortly, Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) came long with its iPod and iTunes product and made the business model work for legally downloading music. On that note, Apple has the lion's share of music downloading business at this time, although many a competitor has cropped up in the last five years.

Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) is widely assumed to be the biggest beneficiary of the downfall of Circuit City, but Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is looking to crash that party. "Circuit City's business is up for grabs right now and we expect to get our share," Gary Severson, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of home entertainment, told (subscription required) the Wall Street Journal.

Companies like Nintendo and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) will get their own in-store displays, and Wal-Mart will also be revamping its electronics departments to create a more open and interactive Best Buy-like shopping experience. Wal-Mart has been trying to move upmarket in the consumer electronics business for years, and offering Palm's soon to be released Pre smart phone is another part of that strategy.

Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) will be ushering in Brian Dunn as its new CEO next month. Dunn, a company veteran, has some solid plans to keep the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. afloat throughout the ongoing economic recession.

But before that happens, current CEO Brad Anderson won't be going out with a bang. A pay bang, that is.

Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) is leading the way in sales of movies and other content on the surging Blu-ray format. Ever since the competing high-definition format HD-DVD went defunct in 2007, Blu-ray has steadily climbed into the driver's seat of disc-based content sales. While traditional DVD sales still dwarf Blu-ray sales, the high-def format is gaining sold ground. With it, Best Buy has become the format's best friend.

Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) wants to carry the best brand-name products in the consumer electronics arena. At the same time, it wants to pit those brands against its private-label products and try to hit both the brand-conscious as well as the price-conscious consumer.

The reason Best Buy thinks it can win in the private-label arena where many retailers have seen mixed to negative results is the use of customer feedback to drive feature levels and pricing. This could be an example of a national retailer actually designing for and listening to customers directly without the need for a third party (outside manufacturer) to get in the way.

Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) won the war with defunct rival Circuit City. Circuit City's demise was based on so many fundamental pieces of mismanagement it was amazing the company lasted into 2009. Now that it is gone, Best Buy stands alone with the larger discount retail chains and online superstores as the places tens of millions of Americans shop for this consumer electronics.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is having a good day. At the time of this writing, shares of the online retailer are up well over 6% on great volume. The catalyst is the earnings report that was released on Thursday after the bell. Should individual investors share this euphoric mood and buy along with the institutions?

Well, the numbers do look nice. Sales rose 18% in the first quarter. Net income increased 20% to $0.41 per share. And free cash flow was said to have rocketed higher by over 80% over the last twelve months. These are impressive stats. And according to this news article, Amazon management beat analysts by a whopping ten pennies. That's a whole dime, my friends! Looks like people are using the electronic shopping cart a lot these days. Perhaps they find value in shopping at home during a recession. Saves fuel costs, and it's a lot easier to research prices and find deals.

Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) is starting to find out that many consumers don't necessarily want to own movies on DVD any longer. In fact, DVD sales have been floundering and the replacement format, Blu-ray, still has a long way to go in order to catch up with the standard DVD format.

When Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) said during the recent holiday season that it was a very tough time in the retail industry, many believed it. Just a few short months later, the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. went on to have a decent quarter in the midst of the current recession -- due in part to the vanishing of its largest direct competitor, Circuit City Stores.

Although consumer electronics retailer Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) reported decent results during its latest quarter, the addition of sales from Circuit City's demise may be hiding inside those results. You can't just banish billions in quarterly revenue to nowhere, and when Circuit City folded for good last month, many retailers were still swimming in the sales wake left behind.