Dixons and Carphone Warehouse confirm discussions are taking place on a possible merger between the two companies-- one creating a mega CE retailer worth around £3.5 billion.

However a press release insists "discussions are at a very preliminary stage and there can be no certainty that a transaction will be forthcoming."

Carphone Warehouse is the biggest of the two retailers, with a market capitalisation of £1.8bn and around 2000 stores in 7 countries. Dixons is valued at £1.7bn and has 1154 stores spread across 12 countries.

According to Asymco Apple once saw "quantum jump" in retail store traffic, but only in the actual meaning of the term in question-- as in less of a "giant leap" and more of a "specific, discrete jump."

How so? Fiscal 2012 saw 372 million visits to Apple Stores. Fiscal 2013 saw 395 million. The numbers might be massive (the increase comes to 23m, the approximate population of Australia), but as plotted graphically (above) against past visitor number, growth appears to be relatively modest, if not on the slowdown.

Following the acquisition of an 80% stake in US carrier Sprint Japan's SoftBank shells out $1.26 billion for 57% of Brightstar, the mobile distributor handling the SoftBank trade-in and phone buyback programs.

Once a small mobile device trader operating mainly in S. American countries, Miami-based Brightstar currently operates in 50 countries. It has boasts pre-tax revenues worth over $7 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2013, and counts Motorola, BlackBerry, Apple, HTC, LG and Samsung as customers.

"Brightstar has been a model of innovation, transforming from a regional wireless distributor into the world's leading provider of services to the wireless industry and we are excited about what that will mean for the SoftBank Group," CEO Masayoshi Son says.

Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts joins Apple, only not as head of retail-- while that particular position remains vacant, Ahrendts gets a newly minted spot in the Apple hierarchy as senior VP of retail and online stores.

From Q2 2013 Ahrendts will oversee the direction, expansion and operations of brick-and-mortar and online retail operations, parly filling the position John Browett held for all of 6 months before his very prominent firing.

“I have wanted one person to lead both of these teams for some time,” a leaked Tim Cook memo reads. “because I believe it will better serve our customers, but I had never met anyone whom I felt confident could lead both until I met Angela.”