What traffic have you noticed at your local Apple Store?
I have been noticing lately that all of the traffic at the Apple store in my area is pushed to the back of the building, where the genius bar and workshop areas are. I was there on a Friday evening last week for about a half hour and did not observe a single sale, except for the dumb accessory I bought!
What I am wondering is if a bunch of my fellow Apple investors would like to get together an organized way of visiting the Apple stores in our areas and then reporting the results that we find. We could start a new thread each week and report our observations.
I spent quite a bit of time in the apple stores during Christmas and could clearly see that the only things they were selling much of were iPhones and the iPad Mini. The iPad Retina table was completely dead. This was certainly evident in their earnings reports.
Maybe it's just a dumb idea but if enough people from various areas participated, we might have a good bead on traffic and Apple's expected performance.
Thoughts?
Comments
You plan to co-ordinate short regular visits to their 350+ stores worldwide to watch the checkouts, ignore all online and reseller sales and extract meaningful data from what people report to guess the next earnings results? Where's the rofl emoticon? There's no emoticon for how I'm feeling right now! I can't even make a giant lol one.
They don't give breakdowns of numbers. Everything was up except Macs because of the iMac delay. 3rd parties report 11 million iPad Minis:
http://macdailynews.com/2013/01/29/ipad-mini-shipments-to-hit-11-million-units-this-quarter-supply-constraints-have-been-overcome-says-source/
That's half what they shipped total. Some cannibalisation but all the iPads are selling well.
Now we're getting somewhere. If you need the stock price to go back up, you just have to make up some stories to make it seem like Apple has new growth opportunities. Pass around word that you have 'unnamed sources' who have let you know there's a new revolutionary product codenamed Project Orange. It's going to come in all colors (including orange), it's low priced and aimed at emerging markets. Russia's going to freakin' love it because it has a feature that keeps your hands warm.
Once the rumour has spread far enough, just sit back and watch AAPL climb. It's the American Dream - getting rich off lies and other people's hard work.
Wow... you are a breath of fresh air aren't you? It was just an idea. Sheesh.
The idea was not to extract precise information, nor to start any rumors, but just to get somewhat of a pulse. I never said that the information would be used to guess the new earnings results, but if the store traffic is slower it might be an indicator. Retail stock analysts visit stores all the time. You cannot go strictly off of one source or another.
I am a longtime Apple fan and investor, but frankly I have not been impressed with the new regime thus far. 2013 needs to be a year of innovation or I am afraid that our precious Apple is going to continue its downward slide...
Frankly, if I would have judged the quarterly results from what I observed in the apple stores in my area for December, I would have been pretty close... A good quarter, but nothing showstopping.
Quote:
Originally Posted by golfman
Frankly, if I would have judged the quarterly results from what I observed in the apple stores in my area for December, I would have been pretty close... A good quarter, but nothing showstopping.
87.5 million Macs, iPhones, iPads and ipods sold in the last quarter. Not quite, but nearly one million a day!
Give it up Golf. You're not cut out for this work.
Piot -
I am afraid you need to remove the Applegoggles.
I LOVE Apple, they had a good quarter, I still have my shares, bought MORE shares on the decline because they are so undervalued. But I am also realistic enough to see that the competition is catching up, Apple is losing some momentum, and if they don't innovate better than they have during the past year and a half, it's going to get ugly.
No, sorry, I haven't bought any Applegoggles yet. You're the one that wants to hang around Apple stores and count sales.
Don't you mean slowing upward climb? RIM and Nokia are doing that whole downward slide thing.
I'd say the problem is they innovated too quickly. They've left very little to actually improve. What else do people need a mobile phone to do?
They can add tactile feedback, motion gestures and faster graphics but they have most things covered already. Find something that they need to improve on the current iOS devices and they'll probably do it.
When people talk about Android device manufacturers innovating, it's more sizes or features nobody is going to use in a practical scenario.
What'll probably happen going foward is iPhone 5S with faster graphics, then iPhone 6 with tactile feedback and gestures, then iPhone 6S with faster graphics and during that period they are probably going to more than double their total sales and make a ton of money doing it.
Originally Posted by golfman
I LOVE Apple, they had a good quarter, I still have my shares, bought MORE shares on the decline because they are so undervalued. But…
I think this sets a record for greatest split between the two parts of the argument you should never listen to at any time.