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Carphone Warehouse

British mobile phone retailer

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ118046 ↗
Source-derived summary

Carphone Warehouse is an online-only mobile phone retailer operating as a trading name of Currys Retail Limited (part of Currys plc).

In August 2014 the company became a subsidiary of Currys plc (previously named "Dixons Carphone"), which was formed by the merger of its former parent Carphone Warehouse Group with Dixons Retail. Prior to this merger, Carphone Warehouse Group was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

Following the closure of all stand-alone UK stores in April 2020, all remaining Carphone Warehouse UK outlets were within branches of Currys PC World. In April 2021, the Carphone Warehouse business in Ireland (including all stand-alone and co-located branches and the website) was closed with immediate effect. Currys continued to use the Carphone Warehouse brand in the United Kingdom, online and, until 2021, inside Currys stores.

History

Early years

The company was co-founded in 1989 by Sir Charles Dunstone and Julian Brownlie, who put £6,000 into the company from their savings. Guy Johnson of NEC UK became the second partner at the company, later taking up the role of Logistics and Distribution director. In 1990, Dunstone brought in his school friend David Ross, a chartered accountant, who became Chief Operating Officer in the same year.

1999 to 2009

In January 1999, the company bought Tandy's operations in the United Kingdom for £9 million.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Carphone Warehouse” as british mobile phone retailer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Carphone, Warehouse and British.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2014, 2020, 2021, 1989—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1989-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Carphone, Warehouse and British providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Carphone Warehouse”, the useful work is to connect “british mobile phone retailer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q118046. VIAF identifies the subject as 315944152. The Library of Congress control number is nb2015006965. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2014, 2020, 2021 and 1989.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Carphone Warehouse”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Carphone Warehouse primary sources, Carphone Warehouse archive and Carphone research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Carphone Warehouse”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Carphone Warehouse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.