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Best Buy to Provide iPads to All Retail Employees?

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Apr 12, 2001
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Forbes reports that a major U.S. retailer presumed to be Best Buy is preparing to provide all of its retail store employees with iPads, a move that could help the electronics chain sell staff (and thus customers) on the company's concept of a "Connected World".
A source with knowledge of corporate mobile device deployments tells Forbes that one of the country's top 10 largest retailers expects to distribute iPads to each of its on-floor sales associates. This retailer, the source adds, operates 1,100 stores across the U.S. As the country's largest electronics retailer - as well as a retailer that currently operates around 1,100 stores in the U.S. - Best Buy is a natural match.
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Best Buy employees approximately 180,000 full-time, part-time, and seasonal employees worldwide, and while only U.S.-based on-floor sales staff would qualify for the rumored offer, the boost would still represent distribution of many tens of thousands of iPads in a significant boost to Apple's bottom line.
Populating every Best Buy store with iPad-toting salespeople would be a boon for Apple, which would not only sell tens of thousands of devices for the purpose, but also have its wares in constant, high profile use across the country.

The benefits are less assured for Best Buy, which has struggled financially in recent quarters. That said, the aim of the Connected Stores is to make Best Buy shops more alluring destinations and to encourage people to purchase devices by offering as interactive and informative a shopping experience as possible. If an army of iPads helps Best Buy achieve this goal, then the gamble will be worthwhile.
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Also unclear is the timeline for such a rollout. Apple will presumably be looking to prioritize distribution to the general public before fulfilling such a large order for Best Buy, as the company typically restricts distribution of popular new products even for its own employees until consumer demand and supply levels begin to come into balance.

Article Link: Best Buy to Provide iPads to All Retail Employees?
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/03/04/best-buy-to-provide-ipads-to-all-retail-employees/
BestBuy sells Apple products.

BestBuy buys ~30,000 Apple products at $500 apiece.

This makes headlines in the media world.

Free advertisement for Apple and Bestbuy and tens of thousands of happy employees.

It's a win win.

Genius
 
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I could be reading this wrong, but isn't this article saying that it is giving to all it on floor employees iPad. Aka to use on their shift? Like when you're in a apple store and there is an employee who is walking around with and iPod touch or an iPad to take appointments or sell products!
It's not like they are giving the employees iPads to keep.
 
It'd be funny if BestBuy end up giving more iPad away than to actually sell them.
 
(Former employee and a rep for a company at best buy)
This would be a very interesting move for a company that generally is not a huge fan of apple, CEO on record is not a fan. But if they could access their inventory from the ipad and not have to bring customers back to the stupid kiosks it would be a huge win. With apple enterprise apps this seems very possible. I see apple "renting" these ipads to best buy win win for both companies but thats just my opinion.
 
Ihatefall said:
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I could be reading this wrong, but isn't this article saying that it is giving to all it on floor employees iPad. Aka to use on their shift? Like when you're in a apple store and there is an employee who is walking around with and iPod touch or an iPad to take appointments or sell products!
It's not like they are giving the employees iPads to keep.
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This is infinitely more likely. When I worked at best buy a few years ago, us retail floor people got just barely over minimum wage. There is no way they're going to be throwing $500 bonuses around to everyone.
 
i think you guys may be reading it wrong

i think they only get to use the ipads on Their shifts, not to keep..... so once your shift is up, you put it in storage...

unless i am reading it wrong
 
This article makes it sound like the iPads are for personal use, but they're not.

That would be a $90 million gift to their employees... not gonna happen.

This is simply a set of SHARED iPads for the ENTIRE STORE, like the cash registers. The employees don't get to take the cash registers home for personal usage, either. ;)
 
Populating every Best Buy store with iPad-toting salespeople would be a boon for Apple, which would not only sell tens of thousands of devices for the purpose, but also have its wares in constant, high profile use across the country.
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Once again, Forbes magazine states the obvious.

Oh, and Apple already has its "wares in constant, high profile use across the country" — it's what we call the Apple Store.
 
I'm calling BS. Best Buy is working on an in-house Rocketfish branded tablet for this purpose. I doubt they'd blow the money on iPad's in the current market, and definitely not anytime soon (end of fiscal year).
 
This will not happen. You won't see a return on giving five hundred bucks away to employees that don't make that in 2 weeks after taxes. They may have the employees use them at the stores, but they aren't going to give these away.
 
So are they going to walk around the store with 'their' iPad 1.5 or do they just get to take one home?

If they are carrying them around, will they have their own man-purse ? It's a PITA to carry one around all day w/o one.
 
and another thing, if APPLE dosen't give their emploies Ipads to keep, i doubt best buy would, its just a mobile cash register
 
scotty321 said:
This article makes it sound like the iPads are for personal use, but they're not.

That would be a $90 million gift to their employees... not gonna happen.

This is simply a set of SHARED iPads for the ENTIRE STORE, like the cash registers. The employees don't get to take the cash registers home for personal usage, either. ;)
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Ding ding ding!

We have a winner!!

This is how it is running in Best Buy's Connected Store pilot program right now. The devices in question are issued to line employees by store management at the beginning of the shift. The employee is required to check the items back at the end of his/her shift. (Failure to do so would probably result in some sort of liability.)

You have tomorrow off? Fabulous, enjoy your day off. The device will be assigned to whoever is replacing you.
 
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It's for sales-floor use, not personal use. It's kinda like how in some stores we wear Dre Beats headphones. Like cvaldes said, we have to sign them in when we start a shift and return them when our shift is done. It's already been tested in places like Pittsburgh where we've been ringing customers out on them. Oh yeah, I work for them in Cali.
 
aeiron said:
I'm calling BS. Best Buy is working on an in-house Rocketfish branded tablet for this purpose. I doubt they'd blow the money on iPad's in the current market, and definitely not anytime soon (end of fiscal year).
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It would be cheaper to rent ipads from apple, than to develop their own in-house tablet. Reading all the ipad stuff lately, all the competitors are having trouble keeping up with apple's pricing.

If they had an app (or even a web interface) that tracked in store prices, and inventory, or even had some talking points on items that an employee could pull up when asked a question about a certain inventory - or better yet, the employee using the camera scans the bar code, and talking points, and specs come up about a certain product, it could really improve the employee - customer relationship. Best buy employees don't know much about the products (in part because there are thousands of diff. products in a best buy). My nearest one employs a bunch of high school kids.

Oh. and they wouldn't "buy" the ipads, as a previous poster mentioned they would be rented to best buy for $150/year. Then apple would take them back and sell them as refurbs at $50 off the original price. Apple would make $$.
 
nostaws said:
It would be cheaper to rent ipads from apple, than to develop their own in-house tablet.
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Apple does not report any rental revenue in their quarterly SEC filings. Heck, they don't even report iTunes Store and App Store revenue. Apple is about hardware sales.

If Best Buy wants to use the devices as sales tools for its store employees, that's great. Best Buy is already buying the units from Apple at wholesale cost. Apple doesn't want to deal with recycling end-of-lifed 100,000 rental units.

That's not their business model.

Besides, equipment rentals are usually more pricier than outright purchases, especially for frequent use. Go ahead and rent a table saw at Home Depot for three days. Tell us what it costs. Then rent it for thirty days. Then another 332 days. Then tell us the retail purchase price.
 
Nice!
But how are sales associates going to lug the thing around and still have hands free to do the rest of their duties? They're going to need some kind of over the shoulder sling or something like that.
I mean if they set it down for one second then there WILL be disappearances and YES people COULD get out of the store before being caught and might even escape video surveillance.

Employees are going to need a way to keep it on their person without actually having to hold it in their hands all day.

Hmm.. If anybody knows of a cool over the should sling for the iPad 2, please post a hint! :)
I mean one that still alows ready access with the iPad screen fully accessible -- e.g. hangs iPad upside down in front or to the side and when needed just lift up with one hand behind and use the other hand to operate the iPad. Something with straps long enough that one could step up to a counter and lay the iPad down and use both hand without unstrapping.
 
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