Investment bank: Apple stores luring in mall customers
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 26, 2007 at 12:25pm
The Piper Jaffray investment bank says Apple retail stores are luring in mall customers. In a note to client Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said that, based on the investment bank’s investigations, 27 percent of people walking within 25 feet of an Apple store entrance would enter the store.
Unfortunately, only a few of those who enter actually buy something. But Munster says that’s okay.
“The important point is this gravitational pull highlights that consumers’ future buying intentions could be shifting to Apple from PCs,” he wrote to clients. “If materialized, this shift should benefit Apple in 2008 and 2009.”
On average, 462 people entered Apple stores each hour on Friday when the company was holding its 24-hour Black Friday sale, according to Piper Jaffray research. By Saturday evening, however, that number had fallen to about 241 people per hour.
During these times, Munster and his team observed the stores selling an average 5.3 Macs and 1 iPhone each hour, compared to 4.3 Macs and 1.3 iPhones during a similar round of checks back in August. The stores sold an average of 13 iPods per hour. Munster had no comparative data from Piper Jaffray’s August checks, but said the sales mix seems to be favoring the higher priced models. Approximately 46 percent were iPod nanos, 19 percent were iPod classics, 19 percent were iPod shuffles and 16 percent were iPod touches.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
