For every person who visited an Apple retail store last quarter, the company took in a record setting $57.60 in revenue, according to a new analysis.
Analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco provided a breakdown of how well Apple's retail operations are performing on Monday. The company saw a 7 percent growth in visitors last quarter, with the per-visitor revenue setting a new company record.
Based on Dediu's findings, Apple's retail stores earn twice as much per square foot as high-end jeweler Tiffany & Co. For each visitor to its stores, Apple earns about $12 in profit.
Over the last year, the average Apple store saw 250,000 visitors per quarter, up from about 170,000 per store in 2010. In the March quarter, the average Apple store netted $13.1 million in revenue, which was the highest level ever for a non-holiday quarter and was up from $12.2 million a year ago.
On Apple's quarterly earnings conference call in April, the company's executives revealed that their retail stores earned $5.2 billion in total revenue in the quarter, up from $4.4 billion a year prior. There were a total of 91 million visitors to Apple stores in the quarter, also up year over year from 85 million.
At the end of the March quarter, Apple had 402 total retail stores around the world, with 151 of those located outside of the U.S. The company plans to open about 30 new stores in total during its fiscal year 2013, while another 20 stores will be remodeled.
Continued success for Apple's retail operations comes in spite of the fact that the company does not currently have a retail chief. The former head of retail at Apple, John Browett, was fired from the company last fall after a short tenure that was marked by strife.
Browett took over for Ron Johnson, who built Apple's retail presence over the span of a decade before leaving for U.S. retailer JC Penney. But Johnson was ousted from that job in April after a series of sweeping changes he instituted didn't bear fruit. That has fueled speculation that Johnson could return to Apple to once again oversee its retail operations.
I can say as a happy consumer that my recent (and frequent) visits have been for far more than $58/visit. My recent contribution had me going there to buy a whole bunch of Airport Extreme's and Express' to upgrade the outdated (and frequently failing) routers and access points in a bunch of apartment units we own.
Ever since we upgraded six months ago, we went from 1-2 calls per month to reset hardware to zero, and everyone's mobile devices / computers, etc have a much better time connecting as well. Best investment yet if one places a value on time.
Keep up the good work Apple!
You provide routers in your apartment bldgs? Nice landlord!
Considering that every time I walk by or go into an Apple store it's overflowing with people, that's impressive.
Just to be picky ... (and I think it's wrong in the source as well) ... it's $58 per *customer* not per visitor.
In other words people who go in and out and don't buy anything aren't being counted here even though the language says that they are.
WS will somehow spin this negative: Apple store revenue per visitor ratio indicates falling margins.
and.... apple.com is still there. hard to buy at tiffany's online.
In the US... I think BestBuy pretty much has all the other cities covered. And Walmart/Target for that matter for iPhones, iPods, and iPads and even AppleTVs.
The stores are placed in areas where you've committed to 'shop' (in MN it's the trip to the Sprawl of America) which is a good thing for retail. You've loaded up your Credit Cards, you know you could buy a coat at Macy's or a new Cinema Display, and now it's just a matter of choice.
I thought the same thing! And "Apple" routers at that!
Just to be doubly picky, it's likely $58 revenue per visitor, not customer. Not all visitors are customers, of course, but that number is pretty simply derived, and is something you could do yourself in a minute. Simply decide the revenue by the number of visitors and you get the results. Because those numbers are rounded off, it doesn't exactly equal the official dollar amount, but it's close enough. Apple states the number of visitors to its stores, and you shouldn't assume they can't have a count somehow. They don't need someone standing by the door, clicking a counter.
You knew what it would cost when you bought the Hummer.
Well, I actually *am* going to assume that they don't have a count of "visitors" as there is simply no way they could.
I've been to many Apple stores. I've never seen anyone with a clicker at the entrance, there are no "electric eyes" and no grids of laser beams to travel through at the doorway. Every Apple store I go to is also filled with mostly "looky-loos" many of whom won't buy anything at all. I know I go there lots of times myself and never buy anything and the local stores here are extremely crowded. You have to turn edgewise just to walk down the aisles most of the time.
Unless Apple has some kind of futuristic minority report style iris scanner operating from the ceiling (which isn't actually invented yet, so … no), there is no way they could know the number of people visiting their stores.
Therefore, it's "customers" (of which they have an always accurate count), or it's a broadly estimated number that's essentially meaningless.
If it's an estimate, there are so many ways in which it could be inaccurate or that the estimated count could be wrong that I don't think it's worth talking about in any serious fashion. If it's an actual count of people walking into the stores, someone has to reveal how this magic is done.
We provide free high-speed internet in our buildings, with each unit having their own private/public IP address. Each unit is hardwired to a central server room. It's a perk and incentive to for applicants and its been hugely successful since in San Francisco, most of our tenants are in the tech-industry. So a happy tenant, is a good tenant in my book.
Because we provide the internet access, I provide the hardware so that folks don't go plugging in their own equipment and potentially screwing something up. All the Airport Extreme routers (WiFi turned off) are stacked in a locked centralized server room - off limits to tenants - and the airport express access points bolted to a central wall - away from the reach of tenants - in each apartment unit. Each room in the apartments have LAN ethernet jacks. They are victorian apartments, but when as we remodeled each unit over the years, we installed LV conduit in the walls so we can feed whatever cabling we want. Routers have a large UPS battery system, and the access points are battery-backed as well, but all hidden. Most tenants do not even know where their WiFi access points are. Apple's Airport hardware also pumps out the strongest WiFi signals so I have no problem hiding the WiFi units behind a hidden wall. It's full signal strength anywhere in the unit.
For years we used linksys, netgear, D-link, etc.. but the quality was so bad, connections intermittent, and I'd get off-hour complaints about the Internet being down. I was the only one using Apple hardware and never had a problem. So going on that theory, I slowly started replacing the hardware in the problem-units first and when they were running perfectly for a few weeks (and with a faster/stable connection than the old hardware) I pulled the trigger and bought a whole bunch of units to upgrade all the hardware before they too would become a problem.
While iHaters and trolls have plenty to say about the Apple's airport hardware, another reason I decided to use them was that the Airport Utility software is simply the easiest way to manage the hardware. I can configure / review / monitor everything from the comfort of my iPhone/iPad and some cool network diagnostic apps for my iOS devices, I no longer need to bring my laptop into any of the units.
So yes, I'm a great landlord, my tenants think I'm the best, and my time is valuable so the less time I spend babysitting hardware the better. I'm so done with the competitors' products. Pure garbage.
Browett took over for Ron Johnson, who built Apple's retail presence over the span of a decade before leaving for U.S. retailer JC Penney. But Johnson was ousted from that job <a href="http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/04/08/former-apple-svp-of-retail-ron-johnson-ousted-from-jcpenney">in April</a> after a series of sweeping changes he instituted didn't bear fruit. That has <a href="http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/04/08/ron-johnson-could-return-to-run-apple-retail">fueled speculation</a> that Johnson could return to Apple to once again oversee its retail operations.
Browett, you mean? He did 'a series of sweeping changes' and got ousted, no?
Edit: great post sflocal, and a well serving landlord. By any chance, is Hampton on Pruneridge Ave. yours? Those are adjacent to the Apple Campus 2, and I wondered if an offer was made.
Good to know that I have skewed the average with my over $3,000 purchases from Apple's brick and mortar steel and glass stores.
The express check out is nice but most people don't know about it.
You are not being picky, you are just being wrong.
Just because you don't see anyone counting people walking in and out doesn't mean that Apple isn't tracking that. Yeah, for everyone who crosses the threshold of an Apple Store, an average of $58 is going to get dropped. How's the Samsung Store doing?
A store like Apple will always have security cams. In addition, they probably have entrance lasers. If they dont have the latter, My theory is they take hourly photos and count.