Apple's Black Friday Sale Deemed a Success by Analysts

[MacRumors]

Last Friday marked the traditional beginning of the holiday shopping season with Black Friday, and Apple's discounts seem to have driven high traffic to its retail stores if a number of reports from research analysts are any indication.

The Wall Street Journal summarizes the thoughts of four such analysts, who saw strong foot traffic at Apple's stores, solid product availability, and enticing (albeit modest by Black Friday standards) discounts on a number of Apple products. While some analysts saw a potential minor hit to Apple's bottom line given the volume of customers taking advantage of the discounts, particularly on the iPad, the strategy is being viewed as an excellent opportunity to gain customer attention during the holiday shopping season.

A number of analysts did take the time to send out research staff to physically observe the traffic at Apple's retail stores, and they appear to have come away impressed with the results. Barron's reports that Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White saw strong traffic throughout the post-Thanksgiving weekend, with particular interest in the iPad (which saw Black Friday discounts of $41) and the MacBook Air.

Fortune notes that Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore oversaw a phone survey of over 100 Apple retail stores and 50 third-party reseller stores and similarly determined that iPads and the 11-inch MacBook Air were the most popular items among customers. Finally, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster performed some quantitative analysis at a limited selection of Apple retail stores, finding sales rates of about 8.2 Macs per hour (on par with last year's results) and strong iPad sales of 8.8 units per hour.

Article Link: Apple's Black Friday Sale Deemed a Success by Analysts

 

[alent1234]

i've been to apple stores in july. how can you get more people in there?

 

[powers74]

HaHa!

Screw you, doubters that thought Apple's Black Friday Sale wouldn't be a success!

 

[shartypants]

Where I live the Apple store is always crowded as well.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Good on them. Also seems paralleled across other sectors.

Thanksgiving Weekend Sales Rise 6.4% as Shoppers Splurge

The average shopper in the U.S. spent 6.4 percent more over Thanksgiving weekend than last year as more people picked up jewelry and toys, heartened by the economic rebound.

About 212 million shoppers went to stores and websites over the holiday weekend, on average spending $365.34, the National Retail Federation said yesterday. The proportion of sales online rose to more than one-third of the total, the highest ever, according to the Washington-based trade group.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...al-45-billion-as-shoppers-scoop-up-deals.html

Wonder what the demand for iPod Classics and Mac Pros was like? You know, that old-skool stuff.

 

[KindredMAC]

I hate analysts...

Large crowds in Apple Stores in malls all across America on Black Friday???
That's an ****** shocker right there....

The Syracuse Apple Store is ALWAYS packed to the gills. Black Friday or not.

Sure Apple had a successful Black Friday but imagine how much more successful it would have been if they would have had deals the likes of MacConnection or MacMall?

 

[ColonelSmith]

Good for apple. Picked up an iPad for my dad's christmas gift on friday.

 

[gorjan]

Good on them. Also seems paralleled across other sectors.

Wonder what the demand for iPod Classics and Mac Pros was like? You know, that old-skool stuff.

I love my iPod Touch, but my old iPod 3g has a special place in my heart.

 

[pitogo]

I think it worked

As crazy as black friday was. The only mall store I saw with a line outside after they've been open for several hours was the Apple Store. And it was a long, long line. I was shocked. My wife and I already have all the apple stuff we need but it seems the rest of the world wanted in on some of that action. By noon the line looked to have been a reasonable 30-40 people queue. Crazy for a $101 discount. Too bad the 11" didn't qualify.

 

[Astro7x]

Sure Apple had a successful Black Friday but imagine how much more successful it would have been if they would have had deals the likes of MacConnection or MacMall?

I don't think the people going on MacConnection or MacMall are the same people going into the Apple Store to try stuff out and make a purchase.

I didn't even buy my iPod Touch from an Apple Store, I got it from Best Buy because of the added bonus of Reward Zone Points and getting a gift card out of it.

 

[rdowns]

I hate analysts...

Large crowds in Apple Stores in malls all across America on Black Friday???
That's an ****** shocker right there....

The Syracuse Apple Store is ALWAYS packed to the gills. Black Friday or not.

Sure Apple had a successful Black Friday but imagine how much more successful it would have been if they would have had deals the likes of MacConnection or MacMall?

Why should they when they don't need to? No reason to leave margin points on the table. Besides, if MacConnection and MacMall moved a ton of Macs by lowering THEIR margins, does Apple not benefit from that?

 

[dwman]

The real winners will be the shareholders when Apple announces its Xma$ results in January 2011.

 

[Skoal]

Screw you, doubters that thought Apple's Black Friday Sale wouldn't be a success!

I don't think too many people were waiting for an Apple black Friday failure as much as they were complaining about the sale prices. I don't see any proof this black friday sale was a great success considering every day appears to be a success at Apple.

 

[ldkaplan]

The Apple Store in Alpharetta, GA was a zoo. It was definitely the most packed I've seen it. I would have walked out with a 13" MBA if they had one with 4gb in stock, but they didn't.

I'm kind of glad I waited...I ended up getting a 13" MBP from Amazon with discounted price and no tax.

I'm not sure why people bought their equipment at the Apple Store. Much better to get online at MacMall, Mac Connection or Amazon. Discounts are as good and no tax.

 

[greenmeanie]

When I goto the Apple stores they are always packed.
But usually no one buys nothing just goofing around on the machines.

 

[rdowns]

When I goto the Apple stores they are always packed.
But usually no one buys nothing just goofing around on the machines.

Yet Apple has the highest dollars per square foot sales in all of retail. Impressive on its own but more so given they've doubled the size of dozens of mall stores. Someone must be buying.

 

[powers74]

I don't think too many people were waiting for an Apple black Friday failure as much as they were complaining about the sale prices. I don't see any proof this black friday sale was a great success considering every day appears to be a success at Apple.

Just a little sarcasm...

From now on I'll just keep it zipped.

 

[RickyK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Busy, buy not 'traffic jam' busy in Northern Ireland. I was hoping for discount on the 11" MB Air.. but to no avail. I got one anyhow! £849 for 64gb, 2gb, 1.4. It's very fast and running like a dream. BTW: don't be put off by testing the boot speed on the demo models instore. I tried 3 and each took between 60-90 secs to boot up. An Apple Genius told me it's probably cause of the security settings on demos. The 11"MB Air is a beautiful thin piece of technology.

 

[kas23]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)

I went to an Apple store on Friday. But, I didn't buy anything. I just like going in there to play with stuff. People walking into a store doesn't equal increased sales. In fact, every time I go to the mall, I go into the Apple store. It's like a habit. I'm sure there were many husbands that we dragged to the mall on Friday and what better thing to do there than go to the Apple store?

 

[Mr Fusion]

Yay! Apple made money...

... yawn.

Is this what qualifies as a "rumor" now?

 

[(L)]

... yawn.

Is this what qualifies as a "rumor" now?

The rumor is that "41" is the real answer to everything in life, not 42.

...Or is there some really obvious reason I missed? Why $41 discounts? I didn't buy an iPad only because I knew it should be 42 and they would only mark off 41. Plus, there's a better one soon anyway, and maybe they're just clearing out. Come up with a new one BEFORE holiday season, Apple!

 

[Jimmy James]

An analysts approval that Apple sold "enough" product on one particular day is irrelevant. And they eyeballed a handful of stores for this prediction? Really?

 

[paradox00]

I hate analysts...

Large crowds in Apple Stores in malls all across America on Black Friday???
That's an ****** shocker right there....

The Syracuse Apple Store is ALWAYS packed to the gills. Black Friday or not.

Sure Apple had a successful Black Friday but imagine how much more successful it would have been if they would have had deals the likes of MacConnection or MacMall?

You're making a very common mistake. You're assuming consumers are rational beings. They are not. Once they are in the mood to spend money, like they are on Black Friday (or Boxing Day here in Canada), they will buy from anywhere and everywhere. Even if a place hasn't discounted their items.

All you need are signs and flyers so people think they are saving money. Once a sales day gets the reputation for great sales, that reputation becomes a bigger driving force for sales than the sales themselves. Most people have never heard of mac connection, all they "know" is that black Friday is the best day to make big purchases. I'm not convinced that deeper discounts would have actually resulted in more profit for Apple.

I'm fairly confident in this assessment because I worked one boxing day in an outlet store. We had some really good boxing day specials, but almost everything in the store was being sold at regular price. One of those items was a 27" CRT TV (before HDTV took off). We would typically sell one or two of these TV's on a good day, but we included the TV's in our boxing day flyer (at the same price they always were) and people were lined up around the building outside and literally tripping over each other to get to these TV's and our other "sales". By the end of the day, we had sold over 50 of those TV's. I'd never seen anything like it before in my life. Because of this, I'm quite comfortable saying that on the whole, consumers are not rational beings.

 

[jouster]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

When I goto the Apple stores they are always packed.
But usually no one buys nothing just goofing around on the machines.

Right. No one buys anything. Sure.

 

[cvaldes]

... yawn.

Is this what qualifies as a "rumor" now?

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