Best Buy closing 50 stores in US, opening 100 smaller stores

Tough times have hit another big-box electronics chain. Best Buy announced Thursday that it will shut down dozens of stores in the U.S.

Best Buy has about 25 stores in Southern California, and more than a thousand nationwide. The big blue store with the yellow tag logo is one of the last old-style big-box chains still standing.

But the company is losing money as sales of high-profit items like flat screen TVs fall while online competition from Amazon and others is on the rise.

So, to keep growing, Best Buy says it has to shrink. Fifty stores will close nationwide, and hundreds of corporate jobs will be cut.

The company will focus more on smaller “Best Buy Mobile” shops in strip malls. As many as 100 of those could open by next year.

Best Buy is hoping to avoid the fate of companies like Circuit City, which went belly-up in 2009.

The list of stores to be closed is still being finalized, so for now its not known which California outlets will survive... and which will die.