Future growth of Apple Stores limited?

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, future growth may limited 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."

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