Is Best Buy selling almost as many iPhones as Apple is directly? Seems hard to believe. But it's true - that's if the results of a new survey from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) are accurate.
The research outfit surveyed new iPhone buyers between December 2011 and February 2012 to discover where the buyers purchased their device. All told, 76 percent of iPhone sales came from a retail store with online stores claiming 24 percent.
CIRP’s data shows that Apple only sold 15 percent of all iPhones purchased in the U.S. during the period of the survey. AT&T sold 32 percent with Verizon coming close with 30 percent. Sprint, on the other hand, sold just 7 percent.
Incredibly, Best Buy sold 13 percent of the new iPhones, only 2 percent less than iPhone maker Apple. As a result, some are asserting today that Best Buy is almost as important to Apple's iPhone sales as Apple's retail and online stores are.
“Apple Stores and the Apple Web site are tremendously productive, but they are limited by their relatively small retail footprint,” CIRP’s Josh Lowitz told AllThingsD. “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.”
Source: CIRP via All Things D
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