Future growth of Apple Stores limited?
updated 01:10 pm EDT, Wed August 3, 2005
Growth of Apple retail?
While the iPod has contributed to Apple's recent resurgence, its retail initiative has also contributed significantly to the company's bottom line over the past few years. A columnist at TheStreet.com notes that although Apple has managed to post some incredible retail growth numbers, by the number of "desirable" locations and also by typicall retail store limitations: "The benefits [of Apple Stores] go beyond just raw sales and income figures, analysts say. Apple launched the stores at a time when other retailers were cutting back on shelf space they had devoted to Apple products, or had stopped carrying them altogether...But the longer-term costs may be more of an issue. The company has been able to show such rapid growth from retail partly because of the relative youth of its stores; more than half the stores are less than two years old....Typically, in the retail industry, individual stores show their greatest sales growth in the first four years before that growth starts to tail off."
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Mar 2004
Y'know...
Sometimes doesn't it seem like these analysts and pundits sit around smoking clove cigarettes and peering through the foul-smelling smoke, coming up with "what-if" scenarios? Then they go back to the office and do some "research" to prove their half-baked (pun intended) ideas. Of course, one can find statistics to support any what-if, so they feel justified in publishing their scenarios.
Hey, economics is not a science. Apple's retail initiative may show slower growth in the next few years, or they may not. Everything ends, of course, but if the slow down begins sooner rather than later, it's because of what's happening in the economy, with Apple products, etc. Not because of statistics.