Apple Stores Generally Mirror U.S. Population Density

The locations of Apple's U.S. retail stores closely track the U.S. Census Bureau for the highest density population centers, according to ifoAppleStoreon Thursday. However, there are a few notable exceptions.

"Apple claims that over 90 percent of the country's population is within 15 minutes of an Apple retail store, and a population analysis seems to confirm their statement," according to ifoAppleStore, a site that closely watches Apple's retail store activity.

However, there remains some notable exceptions: "Spokane (WA); Boise (ID); the eastern seaboard of Florida north of Miami; a large area of eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey; metro Cleveland; areas of Massachusetts and Rhode Island; and a corridor from central North Carolina south to Atlanta and Alabama."

Apple also looks at the overall wealth of the zip code and other factors when making a decision about store locations. That could explain the delay in the launch of certain locations in Idaho, North Carolina, and Alabama.

ifoAppleStore's map is large, easy to read, and offers an illuminating view of Apple's store location strategy. It may also explain why an Apple store isn't coming to your city any time soon.

Source: the Mac Observer

Analyst: RadioShack may test concept similar to Apple stores

CHICAGO – RadioShack Corp. may soon test a new concept designed to emulate Apple Inc.'s popular stores, an analyst said.

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Deutsche Bank analyst Mike Baker said he believes the company's pilot project will "replicate the look and feel" of Apple stores, and may include access to some wireless brands not carried by the company, such as T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T.

"Our source indicates that (RadioShack) is building three test stores to open by October, and then will hope to have ten by year end, 150 in the next 12 months and 400 in three years, if successful," Baker told investors in a research note Friday. "We do not know if a name for the new format has been chosen, but we believe it will not invoke the RadioShack brand."

He said the new stores would target higher end, non-mall sites and capitalize on the growing popularity of touch-screen phone technology.

RadioShack spokeswoman Wendy Dominguez said the doesn't comment on "speculation or rumor."

RadioShack has about 4,400 stores and is scheduled to report earnings on July 24.

Source: Dallas News

Verizon Wireless opens flagship New England store in Downtown Crossing

Verizon Wireless this week opened what it said will be its flagship New England store in Boston’s Downtown Crossing.

The mobile phone company’s regional president, Kenneth Dixon, said the store was part of a push in the area.

“We didn’t build this store because we wanted to. We built it because we had to,” he said.

Verizon’s store locale may help the company keep an eye on the competition.

AT&T, formerly Cingular Wireless LCC, has a store located at 290 Washington Street — just down the street. AT&T has 71.4 million subscribers, and still reigns as the nation’s largest mobile phone company. Verizon has 67.2 million subscribers, but maintains the largest revenue, $43.9 billion, for 2007.

The store, located in Downtown Crossing on Washington Street, is part of what Alan Carpenter, Verizon’s New England Director of Retail Sales and Operations, calls an “evolutionary design.” This new store design consists of a hands-on, multimedia consumer experience. The design has been introduced in stores across the country, including locally in Mansfield and Wareham.

A large part of the new design is notebook computers that demonstrate Broadband Access, the company’s high-speed wireless internet service, aimed at professionals and on-the-go students.

“With these computers, if the store is busy, you can listen to music or surf the web while you wait,” said Carpenter.

The store has 55 models of handsets, PC cards and other devices for customers to test for themselves. Another reason for the PCs? Pure amusement.

“People want to play,” said Carpenter.

While AT&T has recently teamed up with Apple’s new IPhone 3G, Verizon’ is also fighting for business in the media market.

“Let’s say you hear a song on the radio, and you want to know who sings it. With the LG Dare model, you can just hold the phone in front of the radio, and it will tell you the song’s name, the artist, the album. Then it will ask you if you would like to buy the song. It’s called music hunting,” said Dixon.

The LG Dare costs $199.99 after mail in rebate and with a two-year plan. Other features turn by turn Global Positioning Devices. Some models even have a Bluetooth charger on the back.

“People don’t come in to buy a phone anymore. They want to text, e-mail, play their music,” said Dixon.

Carpenter said the store is designed to cater to this new kind of consumer. “Fifteen years ago, we had three kinds of phones. Now, every phone in the store is different,” Carpenter said. “And customers know that. Consumers are educated, and this store is a natural evolution that reflects that level of sophistication.”

As for the next step for Verizon, Carpenter says new technologies are on their way.

“Where we’re heading is one device for everything. Now that we have broad-based, high quality wireless in New England as a platform, the applications we can add on top will be exceptional.”

Maureen Feeney, president of the Boston City Council, was among the crowd as the ribbon was cut and a check for $2,500 was presented to Nancy Schneider, cofounder of Dress for Success, a nonprofit organization that provides women who are victims of domestic violence professional attire for work.

Source: Boston Business Journal

Boston: Apple has Arrived!

Apple has arrived.

The much debated, highly anticipated, three-story glass facade building at 815 Boylston St. will open to the public on Thursday evening, making it Apple's largest retail venture in the United States. The Back Bay shop will feature oodles of gadgets, including 64 iPod music and video players, 104 Mac laptops and computers, and a third floor dedicated entirely to service that can accommodate 100 customers receiving one-on-one training at the same time.

For many local technophiles, Thursday's opening will end Apple's long snub of Boston. Despite the company's world dominance in all things cool and sleek, the absence of the innovation icon in the city's retail district has been a sore spot for some time. Boston, one of the few major cities without an Apple store, also was jilted by the technology giant when Apple refused to attend the Macworld trade show after it moved back to Boston from New York in 2004.

"Boston is obviously a tech-savvy area with a lot of high-tech companies and a history of innovation. To not have a store in Boston is kind of a black eye on the city. There was a glaring hole," said Josh Martin, a senior analyst at the Yankee Group, a market research firm in Boston. "This store opening is Apple's coming out party in the Northeast region. It is Apple planting its flag to say: 'We're going be here for a long time.' "

Apple, for its part, said it identified the Boylston Street site back in 2000, but had to wait until the lease ran out for the previous tenant, printing business Copy Cop, according to Ron Johnson, Apple's senior vice president of retail. In the meantime, Apple opened eight smaller stores in area suburban malls, which quickly became known as hip consumer-friendly destinations to shop, learn, and work. (More than 5,000 people applied for the 165 jobs at the Boston store.)

The roughly 20,000-square-foot building on Boylston Street is part of an elite cadre of about 10 high-profile Apple stores opened in high-traffic neighborhoods with extensive amenities and a vast array of products on display. Company officials initially considered keeping the Boston site - its 210th shop - open 24 hours daily, but decided against it. Instead, the Boston store will operate from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily, the second longest hours for an Apple store worldwide behind its New York location.

The entire first floor is dedicated to Macs (iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, Mac Pro); the second floor is devoted to smaller devices, including iPhones and iPods (iPod touch, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod classic); and the third floor will feature the famed Genius Bar, where customers can get technical help, and areas for personal training sessions. Concierge staff will be available on each floor just to help consumers navigate the building.

The Boston shop will offer free four-week "Pro Lab" sessions, in-depth training on Apple's professional creative applications, including digital photography and video editing. Staff will host a "summer camp" in July that provides youths with free classes on how to make movies and create websites, among other topics.

Across the street from the Prudential Center, Apple's store will be awash in natural light, with a glass facade and palate of signature materials used in other stores, including a gray stone floor. There will be an ecofriendly roof blanketed with vegetation designed to keep the building cool in the summer and insulated in the winter. When it was first proposed, the ultramodern design came under attack by Back Bay neighbors accustomed to more historic architecture. But after some design tweaks, Apple was welcomed to the neighborhood.

Company officials would not provide a tour of the finished store, but sketches submitted to the city show a spiral staircase in the center and a large Apple icon hanging in the front that lights up.

Retail analysts attribute Apple's store success to the same formula that has made their products among the best-selling and most-desired across the world: accessible, friendly, and hip. Apple's stores average about $2,500 in sales per square foot, far outpacing retailers like Best Buy, which averages about $970 in sales per square foot, according to a 2006 report by Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler.

Michael Oh, an Apple reseller located directly behind the new Apple shop in the Back Bay, recognizes this success and has adjusted his business model to focus more on professional clients and less on consumers so that it wouldn't compete as much with the new behemoth moving in.

"They can throw a lot more money into the retail experience compared to what we can do," said Oh, who owns Tech Superpowers on Newbury Street, and has had a webcam taping the construction of the new store for the past year. "We're obsessed with Apple like everyone else. It just so happens that our vendor is now our biggest competitor."

Source: Boston Globe

Apple claims title of top song seller

The biggest record store in the U.S. isn't a record store at all, it's Apple Inc.'s iTunes.

Yesterday, the computer giant announced that after just five years in the market, its online music store has blown past Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to become the largest retailer of music in the U.S.

As Apple's dominion over the industry grows and CD sales continue to plummet, it becomes increasingly apparent that consumers are gravitating toward digital music and that the former heavyweight champions of the retail game - big-box stores such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target - will not be the next challengers to contend for the title.

That competition is likely to come from the newcomers to the digital marketplace, where Apple currently commands about 70 per cent of sales.

Amazon.com Inc., the first online retailer to convince consumers it was safe to shop over the Internet, launched its own digital music service last September.

Yesterday, a new challenger came into the fray, when News Corp.'s MySpace social networking website announced a partnership with three of the four major record labels to start a service that could prove to be Apple's toughest competitor so far.

While Apple remains the runaway leader, with more than four billion songs sold to date, analysts say that as the online music retail industry grows, the company's market share is bound to slip as its competitors establish themselves as legitimate options.

"It's inevitable that the competition will catch up to Apple to some degree," said Kevin Restivo, an analyst with IDC Canada. "Apple's lead is monumental at this point ... but the market is large enough that competitors will grab a sizable share too."

Yesterday, Apple said its announcement was based on consumer data collected in January and February by the NPD group, which counted 12 songs as equal to one CD.

Apple built its musical empire by marrying the runaway success of its iPod music players with the rise of online music sales through iTunes. The iPod, and now the iPhone, have created a loyal following and remain Apple's strongest weapons in the digital music market.

"Selling music is a slow-buildup business," said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey.

"It took iTunes five years to get to this position and that was due largely to the most successful consumer audio device since [Sony Corp.'s] Walkman."

It will take time for Amazon or MySpace to grow to the point where they can become credible competitors, despite the potential for success in both, he said.

"Amazon has a good shot at it because it has many great music customers on their rolls thanks to their CD business," he said. "MySpace's potential success will come from a completely different angle - the power of the social experience to drive passion and the behaviour that follows it."

Conservative estimates from analysts say Amazon has the chance to sell about 200 million songs by the end of 2008, which would still pale in comparison to Apple's totals.

Apple's announcement comes at a time of great upheaval in the music industry, with many artists - including Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and Oasis - starting to experiment with direct-to-consumer retail models by selling songs through their websites.

MySpace Music already draws about 30 million visitors a month, but the addition of an e-commerce function could evolve to become a significant challenger to iTunes. One in five Internet users already use the site as a destination to discover new music, according to Mr. Restivo, and many musical acts - including the Arctic Monkeys - have used the site as a career-launching pad.

The updated version of MySpace music will allow consumers to purchase songs, merchandise and concert tickets, News Corp. said in a statement yesterday.

Source: GlobeAndMail.com