This would appear to not only be the best Christmas ever for Apple, it could well be the best ever for any consumer manufacturer!
So, how is that for hype? But it is so true. Not only will Apple’s own stores have great sales of Macs, iPod Touches, iPhones and iPads. They are also going to have a couple of thousand new outlets in the US. That is the iPhone will be sold by AT&T and Apple, but for the first holiday it will also be sold by Best Buy, RadioShack and Wal-Mart. Additionally the Verizon will be selling the WiFi version of the iPad and AT&T will be selling the 3G version. Target of course started selling all 6 models of the iPad last week. (Best Buy had them since April 3rd, in limited quantities.) This week, it was announced first that Wal-Mart will be selling iPad in a few hundred store, increasing to over a thousand by mid-November. Then we heard that they would also include their Sam’s Clubs as well
I had a friend at our MUG ask “Why would Apple let others make so much of the sales their own stores could make. My response, “with less that 300 stores in the US, they would have limited distribution. There are a lot of communities out there that Apple will never be able to serve. But Wal-Mart is in much smaller towns where they dominate the retail scene.
That should mean that a LOT more iPads will be sold. I can’t predict exact numbers, but even before these announcements were made I saw some estimated of more that 11 million in all of 2010. It is going to be fun trying to predict these and the additional impact of the iPod touch with FaceTime and whatever will be announced on Wednesday, Oct 20th. Now if I had only bought a couple of hundred shares in 1997.
