Lowe’s introduces handheld devices

RIS News reports that US-based home improvement retailer Lowe’s has launched handheld devices for employees. Lowe’s will deploy approximately 42,000 devices in around 1,700 outlets in its US and Canadian stores and expects the roll-out to be complete by January 2012.
"Our goal is to make home improvement simple for customers and our employees. Leveraging Apple's iPhone technology, our employees will check inventory availability, access how to videos and utilise lowes.com from the aisles of the store." said Lowe's CEO Robert Niblock.

Lowe's key competitor, Home Depot, caused waves late last year with its deployment of 30,000 First Phone mobile devices. The devices are used as POS devices, have inventory lookup, phone and walkie-talkie features. Other retailers, such as Nordstrom have followed suit and has launched 6,000 mobile POS devices to its stores, and (US) Urban Outfitters has began a trial rollout of mobile POS.

It seems that Lowe's is looking to expand the roles of the devices. The deployment is "a significant step towards simplicity and seamlessness and we will continue to add functionality to these devices over time" comments Niblock.