A chain of Best Buy electronics stores is to be built in the UK in defiance of worries about a subdued British consumer after the US company bought a 50% stake in the retail arm of Carphone Warehouse.

The two companies are to form a joint venture, and go head-to-head with the likes of Curry's owner DSG International, after Best Buy agreed to pay £1.088bn for a half-share of the business which includes the Carphone Warehouse's 2400 outlets across Europe plus related elements such as its insurance operation.

Carphone Warehouse will continue to have complete ownership of its fixed-line telecoms business, comprising TalkTalk, AOL Broadband and Opal. It will also keep its share of the Virgin Mobile France joint venture.

The deal will leave Carphone Warehouse chief executive Charlie Dunstone with £250m in net cash at his disposal, once he has paid off the company's £800m debt, which he might yet use to help finance a takeover of broadband rival Tiscali.

Dunstone styled the deal as one that kept Carphone Warehouse ahead of its competitors.

"As a management team we try to stay above the crowd and predict what customers are going to be looking before they themselves realise it."

The future, as Dunstone sees it, is one where the various electronic goods in people's homes, such as their computers and televisions are interlinked but where people also want help installing it in their homes.

This matches the model of Best Buy, which bought a 3% stake in Carphone Warehouse itself last year. It takes more than a fifth of sales of consumer electronics in the US by selling a range of goods and services from giant stores. Carphone Warehouse has run a mobile phone joint venture with it in the US since 2006.

"We see there is a real pan-European opportunity between us," Dunstone said. "We can see that the products that originally have been sold in silos are beginning to be connected." He said the European roll-out of Best Buy stores would begin in the UK when it hoped to open its first stores during 2009.

Dunstone refused to give a target for store numbers but said: "What we do will be meaningful. This is not a token gesture." He denied that the subdued consumer environment made this ill-timed, arguing that it made it easier to get hold of larger retail stores.

The existing Carphone Warehouse chains will continue their expansion into the laptop computer market, with all stores selling them by August. Dunstone is an evangelist for mobile broadband, judging that privacy hungry teenagers will drive the move as they seek to keep their parents away from their email as mobiles gave them secrecy on the phone.

He also believes that mobile broadband providers will begin to subsidise laptops as mobile phone companies do with handsets. "I really think the laptop is the new mobile phone," he ventured.

Collins Stewart analyst Mark James was among those tipping Carphone Warehouse to come to sell the rest of its retail business. "We believe the deconsolidation by Carphone Warehouse is likely to be seen as a route to eventual complete exit," he said.

But Dunstone denied this. "I do not know what we can do to demonstrate more how committed we are to retail and how excited we are about the prospects. It is in our DNA, in our blood."

He made it clear that Carphone Warehouse was eyeing up growth opportunities for its fixed-line business, most notably in considering a takeover of loss-making Italian company Tiscali. "We are watching with interest what its happening at Tiscali. We are part of the process and certainly would like to be considered at the right price as a potential acquirer of the business."

Landsbanki analyst Dan Gardiner said: "We believe this is a positive move. We saw the distribution business as facing significant challenges and the value, once working capital outflow is factored in, at significantly below this current price."

Carphone Warehouse closed 10.25p down at 289p yesterday. Tiscali rose 0.6% to 2.67.