BEST Buy Co., the largest U.S. electronics retailer, is cutting 2,400 jobs, or 1.4 percent of its total, as the retailer seeks to cut costs amid increased competition from online retailers and lower sales of its bread-and-butter televisions and notebook computers.

    About 600 of the jobs will be from its 20,000-person Geek Squad service and repair unit with the other 1,800 coming from store staff. Best Buy has a total of 167,000 employees.

    “These changes were previously announced as part of the leadership team’s ongoing turnaround plan,” Best Buy said in a statement Friday.

    Employees were notified about the job cuts last week.

    The job cuts came on the heels of the company’s March announcement that it’s shutting 50 of its big-box stores and cutting 400 corporate and support jobs as it targets US$800 million in planned cost reductions by fiscal 2015. The company declined to give the total number of jobs it’s cut this year.

    Best Buy has faced increased online competition led by Amazon.com Inc. as well as from retailers including Walmart Stores Inc. and even its supplier Apple Inc., analysts have said.

    (SD-Agencies)