December 27th, 2006
Apple, the new king of retail
Apple opened a retail store in Taiwan over the weekend. According to DigiTimes:
The new Apple Computer store is located in an area of Taipei famous for a large number of consumer electronic stores and has three floors with a total floor space of about 397 square meters (4,270 square feet) and cost NT$150 million (US$4.6 million) to set up, the sources pointed out.
ifoAppleStore reports that the Taipei store is actually a new Apple reseller in Guanghua Market. Although there have been rumors of official Apple stores opening beyond Japan (in Korea, Hong Kong, the Phillipines and Taiwan) they remain just that, rumors. Apple continues to rely on resellers to sell its products in Asia.
Red Herring's Scott Martin has the scoop on what may be the most impressive statistic about Apple's foray into retail store sales: the company hauls in more annual revenue per square foot than any other retailer. Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi breaks it down.
Apple's stores have hauled in annual sales per square foot of $4,032, compared with Best Buy's $930, Neiman Marcus' $611, and luxury store Tiffany & Co.'s $2,666.
Apple stores, on average under 6,000 square feet, each bring in more than $23 million in annual sales, according to the Bernstein report. That compares with annual sales per store of $38 million at Best Buy, which has stores about seven times larger.
But it may not just be the products that make Apple stores great. "This may be as much an indicator that Apple's store placement is better than Tiffany's," Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle said.
Apple has 170 retail locations in four countries with about 150 in the U.S.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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