Best Buy Sells Almost As Many iPhones As Apple Stores

Ryan St Onge March 23, 2012 0

Best Buy stores are known for having mini Apple outlets within more than half their stores. But it wasn’t until 2008 when Apple started to stock the iPhone. This was one of Apples brightest moves, because Best Buy accounts for 13 percent of all iPhone sales. The number isn’t very high, and we realize that, but most people purchase their iPhones directly from their carriers, which can explain the low figure. Apple sells a similar number, 15 percent, of all iPhones.

The numbers are provided from the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) , who surveyed iPhone purchasers this past December, January, and February. CIRP also did another survey and they found out that 76% of iPhones were purchased in retail stores, while 24% were purchased online. When a survey was taken near the release of the iPhone 4s nearly 67% of sales were online and 33% were in-store due to pre-orders.

Breaking down the pie-chart above, its obvious that Verizon and AT&T are the major retailers for the iPhone. AT&T sells 32 percent of iPhones and Verizon sells 30 percent. Sprint seems to lack much iPhone user-base, only selling 7 percent of all iPhones. The ‘other’ section represents a variety of retailers including radio shack and Walmart. This causes us to wonder how well T-Mobile would compete if they were added as a iPhone retailer.

Despite Best Buy only selling 13 percent of iPhones, they are still a huge part of iPhone sales. Each quarter Apple sells over twenty-million iPhones, which means best buy accounts for over a million. CIRP even explained to Allthingsd Best Buys situation, “There are four times as many Best Buy stores, and probably 20 times as many AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint stores, so aggressive distribution through all these channels is critical to Apple’s U.S. strategy.”