Is Amazon (AMZN) looking to go back to the future with Radio Shack?

Bloomberg reporting the biggest online retailer is considering buying some Radio Shack stores if, as expected, the struggling electronics chain files for bankruptcy. The idea would be for Amazon to use the old Radio Shack locations to display its products, such as the Kindle, and possibly as a pickup center for customers.

Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli points out that a move like this wouldn’t be that far afield for Amazon.

“A lot of this maybe makes sense for Amazon,” he says. “Amazon is a less virtual business than we like to pretend. They have the biggest warehouses in the world, they have a massive server farm business-- the web services business-- so they know how to operate something physically.”

However, Santoli warns that even if Radio Shack does go into bankruptcy, we’re far from seeing its stores suddenly becoming Amazon ones.

“We have to be a little bit careful here,” he notes. “You have a lot of competitors coming in to kick the tires. Everybody has access to the books and says maybe it makes sense for us to take some of these. The reports yesterday were that many of them would become Sprint (S) stores. That makes a whole lot of sense because Radio Shack stores have been kind of converted into mobile phone marketing vehicles anyway.”

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Santoli feels if Amazon does consider having a more brick-and-mortar presence, it needs to be careful.

“The question is, would it be a muddling of its brand,” he asks. “Hopefully, they don’t just become a means to sell everybody one of their phones, because that would be not a great use of their time and energy.”

But Santoli understands why Amazon would want to get more “physical.”

“I think there’s benefit to it and more broadly, it’s a matter of convergence. Every physical retailer thinks of itself-- or tries to-- as being a digital retailer, and vice-versa to some degree.”

Santoli points to Apple (AAPL) as a good example.

“Apple doesn’t have 4,000 stores,” he points out. “They don’t say you have to be everywhere but you have to have a certain number in some choice locations, where you do have the serendipity effect of just going in and browsing or a service issue.”

And Santoli argues that Amazon’s interest in Radio Shack stores shows that even with all the emphasis today on selling online, the old way of buying goods will always be with us.

“I do think there’s a certain amount of commerce that just never going to leave the physical realm,” he says. “You have that foot traffic, you have people’s eyeballs and you want to catch both of those things when you can.”